All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.
I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.
I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that.
If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.
I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.
Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'
I approach every part I'm asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn't get it, or if he does?
I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.
Mellow doesn't describe me. I'm hungry every day.
Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.
If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.
I think the thing about film is, as it gets proved by a lot of young filmmakers now, that the medium will just go on reinventing itself, and so you just hope to be a part of that and not a part of some kind of endless regurgitation or 'Here I am doing what you know I do' kind of thing.
I'm a lot less serious than people think.
England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.
Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.
It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.
I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.
Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.
Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.
I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.
