"In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don't know."
"If you go into a bank or a shop and you want them to believe that you're going to shoot them, that's an acting exercise. If you want to turn to someone else who's as tooled up as you are and persuade them to put their knife down because you'll use your knife, that's an acting exercise. Nine out of 10 delinquents are frustrated actors."
"Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters."
"I know virtually no one of my age who can remember a hug, or a smile from their father, or a 'Let's go play football.'"
"There are some people who walk into a room and they oxygenate it, by their very being there's fresh air. Then there are those who come in with the smell of death and they suck the life out."
"There's a part of bohemia I love. The lack of prejudice, the lack of aggression, I love the lack, for the most part, of competitiveness. It's more peaceful."
"Truth is I don't think God on a daily basis. I think politics, science."
"If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean."
"You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you."
"I find the world more absurd now than I did when I was a kid."
"Part of the reason why so many actors lose the plot when they go over to America is that they become part of an industry, so that's why they don't want to play weak, bad or vulnerable guys - because that's not sellable; that diminishes their profit margin."
"Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that's what they are - they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain."
"Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear."
"Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding."
"I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.'"
"It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby."
"A lot of actors aren't particularly good directors. And they're not particularly good with other actors. That's kind of a fallacy."
"I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!"
"What point is there to all the wealth and power that America may have if they can't look after its own?"
"In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of."
"I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them."
"I did 'Deathly Hallows' so my kids could get on the 'Harry Potter' set. They met Daniel Radcliffe, who was a darling and couldn't have been nicer to them so I'm a hero right now."
"If you are the kind of guy who draws in 100 million people to see his film, you've got every right to be paid accordingly, but I qualify as a character actor. I don't put a bum on a seat."
"I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to."
"The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer."
