I don't mind playing somebody who's not likable, or makes the audience feel slightly conflicted.

I think fear is one of the natural states of most actors, to be honest.

When I started acting, I thought if I got one or two jobs a year I'd be lucky. So yeah, my career has gone so much farther than I ever suspected it would, and as such I feel lucky for everything I get. I feel thankful and grateful.

I actually went to drama school at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow, so I stayed in my home town the whole time. However, I see more of my friends now than I did then. It's strange.

I like cooking, but I don't think I could be a chef. Everyone from the ground up does terrible hours, whether you've just walked in off the street and you've got no experience, to whether you're the head chef. You can work 14 or 15-hour days. It's really, really intense.

Shakespeare's stories are still very strong. He structured fantastic stories about things that were fundamental to the human being and psyche.

I'd like to have stayed in the Scouts beyond the age of 12.

Basically, every character I've ever played, I've based entirely on internal conflict. And I love doing that, because I think it's very human.

I don't really... go to 'the opening of an envelope.' I don't really turn up to all the events, you know what I mean? If I'm involved, I'll go, and if there's a good friend who needs support, I'll go, but otherwise... I don't go. I'm probably just a bit like my grandparents; I like staying in.

I look at the Christian Bale movies, the 'Batman' films, and that shows you that superhero movies don't just have to be about men in tights.

Every time I do a movie, especially an animated movie, I just seem to scream and shout and hyperventilate for money.

Until I'm on the set of a film, to me it's still not for real.

I've seen beautiful actresses get spat at or just someone trying to get a rise out of them so they can get an extra hundred bucks for a photo. It's really rough.

Shooting films in Britain is always difficult, because we've never got enough money to make them.

I do find it strange, doing magazine shoots. Photographers always go, 'Why don't you like to have your picture taken? That's what you do for a living anyway. Just pretend you're acting. It's the same thing!'

I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.

If you don't have the good fortune to work a lot then you take any job you get offered, whether it's a good job, fun job, a bad job, horrible job, whatever, you just take what you need to take. But I'm lucky in that - at the moment anyway and hopefully forever, but who knows - I get the chance to pick jobs for the kick of it and the fun.

I still take work if I think it's good. If I like the script, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.

Fear is really powerful; it's really useful to me.

People come up to me and they're usually nice, but as it goes on you realise that some people aren't nice. Some people are not nice at all.

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I mark a point in my solo where it's got to peak at point D I go to A, B, C D then I'm home.

Atticus Finch is, you know, he was just his whole - the business of his modesty and his ability to see tomorrow and to try to buttress his knowledge of what was coming for his kids was something that I'll never - as a father I'm not able to do.

Every time I see something about the Wild West, I'm reminded that our version of history may not be what really happened.

I don't like living around too many fancy-pantsy folks. That ain't my thing. I'm not into phony people.

People call him a terrorist, but you can use language to do many things and say many things about people, but John Brown was a hero.

James Brown's life was really a metaphor for our inability to talk about matters like race and class in America.

I don't like a bunch of writers sitting around, puffing smoke, they like this book, he wrote this - tell me a dirty joke, you know. It's just not my style, I've never been that kind of person.

Until you expose the cancer, you can't fix it.

James Brown was the Monday-to-Friday guy. He was the hardest man in show business. He was like your dad and your uncle: He showed up, and he hit hard.

If you meet your heroes, you're always going to be disappointed. Frederick Douglass was a great man, but would I want my daughter to marry him? Probably not. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's a great man.

The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.

When you glorify violence, then it comes back to bite you.

My wife and kids like the quiet and the countryside - I still find that kind of quiet hard to listen to.

I just love music, and I love what music does for people.

Caring is beyond race. Either people care about you, or they don't.

Anyone can write your own life story.

I don't want to read a book that's depressing.

A band is not a democracy: It's show business.

I put headlights in Ford vans. I still drive a Ford.

You can play Mozart all you want and pretend that it gives you class, but what is class, you know? Class is a bus driver on the M103 who gets off the bus to help somebody on board even though he's tired, he's exhausted, and he's two months behind on his mortgage. That's real class.

My father died in 1957, just before I was born. My mother went to her Jewish aunt, who slammed the door in her face.

You have to be able to toss the thing out. You can't fall in love with your characters, and you have to know when to fight - and when to quit.

Be kind to the living.

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.

Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.

I'm not interested in food. It's just fuel.

Be a member of the human race. Love somebody. Change the world.

A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.

I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.