Quotes

I'm a bit of an old-fashioned person who keeps things private.

Other people have interpreted Rawdon Crawley as a stupid, simple person who gets taken for a ride, but I sympathize with him a lot more. I think he's actually blinded by love and so desperate to make something work that isn't working. I suppose it's why you do the job-there's nothing interesting in emulating or copying something that someone's done before.

Daniel Day-Lewis said if an audience knows what I had for breakfast, who I'm married to, where I go on holiday, what shoes I wear and what car I drive, how can they possibly believe the characters I play?

I love Elizabethan London - the whole grit and immediacy of it. There was a time when you couldn't build higher than St. Paul's Cathedral, and I think London must have looked so beautiful then. I suppose it's easy to look back and admire a time in history - we only learn about the beautiful bits. I'm quite happy where and when I am now, but what makes me sad is our lack of connection to what is around us now. People see the world through their phones, now, not their eyes. I miss a time without those.

I'm not sure a person can call themselves romantic. It's a trait others have to see, I think. I love people, in all walks of life. Sitting opposite a person, talking and listening to them could be seen as romantic - or just how we should all be living.