"It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife."

"People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different."

"People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different."

"Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong."

"I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse."

"I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap"

"My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised."

"Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome."

"People coming up and saying something nice is always welcome. But when you're being secretly photographed, that's not so nice. I would rather shake hands with someone and exchange a few words than take a selfie."

"I absolutely don't care about my looks and I'm so used to them that I wouldn't change a thing. I would end up missing my defects."

"To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all."

"There’s a paradox to most things in life. Acting is often dressing up in frocks and chasing your ego, but that doesn’t mean you don’t take it seriously."

"My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s."

"I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent."

"I'm not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don't get it right or don't respect others' needs."

"You have to be ill if you want to get better."

"The thing is that anybody looks good in the right clothes. It will affect your bearing. It will affect your demeanor. It informs the way you behave."

"I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky."

"If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there."

"I enjoy playing Mr. Darcy, but I'm not hungry to play Mark Darcy again."

"Something like 'A Single Man,' it was tiny; it was financed by one guy. We all lost money doing it."

"I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends."

"If I were to write a book about the progress of getting to a third film, it would be a long one."

"Growing up, my mates and I would have rather been Sid Vicious or members of the Royal Family."

"I backpacked through France and Italy in my teens, and then I was at Cannes with the first movie I did in '84."

"I love 'Manhattan', and I know it's not one of Woody's favorites."

"I would definitely do TV, at the drop of a hat, if I was offered a good role."

"In filming, you're waiting - you're waiting for lights, you're waiting for people to set things up - and when you're not waiting, you're repeating."

"I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science in a way."

"Some people would say comedy draws from some dark places, from your dark stuff. Life's great optimists aren't necessarily the funniest people."

"I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird."

"My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem."

"We've always been involved with America - I have a son who lives there and it's a big part of my life."

"As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff."

"Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering."

"Hollywood hasn't aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood."

"I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments."

"I do think I'm a character actor."

"I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine."

"I'd love to try my hand at something else."

"It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another."

"Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing."

"The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well."