As a producer or financier, you are going to go where you get the best bang for your buck.

I can imagine there is going to come a time when someone will do 13 hours of a story without breaks.

I don't even think in terms of ambition.

Anytime someone can beat the acting out of someone else, I think it's a wonderful thing.

I think people love it when anybody acts bad; it's not particular to me.

My admiration for 'Mary Tyler Moore' is very, very big because they went out on top.

I'm not a writer, and I don't want there to be any mistake about that.

While data can only tell you what has happened in the past, it can in some ways give you a sense of what might be of interest to an audience in the future.

'The 24 Hour Plays' is a quite brilliant, exhilarating event for everyone concerned.

We're going to see a lot of companies that have been portals of entertainment become producers.

When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.

For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans.

The audience wants control. They want freedom.

If you're not concerned about maintaining an image, you can pursue roads that another actor might not take.

One can never take the cynicism one comes across in life too seriously.

What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful.

Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.

If we don't reach out to make theatre affordable to the young generation, we will lose them all.

When I look around at Broadway and the West End, theatre is becoming an exclusive club.

Working in film tends to isolate actors - it's your close-up; it's all about you.

If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span?

Kids aren't growing up with a sense of television as the aspirational place for their ideas.

If you ignore the murdering and the conniving, Francis Underwood is an effective politician.

I have never played a game in my life.

I've taken the experiences that I've had in the theatre and applied them to film and television and now games.

Games are advancing in terms of storytelling and trying to create a character, and it's a brand new audience for me.

I'm not going to make general comments about the British press.

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.

I certainly identify with the role of mentor and, to some degree, maybe teacher. I do a lot of work with kids at the Old Vic.

There are times when you do a play when you are living in the character over a two-and-a-half-hour period or longer, and you come to the end of the night, and you can feel like you were hit by a truck.

I'm not revolted by Washington.

In film, movies' schedules are based on three things: actors' availabilities, when are sets being built, when you can rent the place you're going to film in.

You can almost hear people saying, 'We're going to make a movie about an election' and 'We're going to make a movie about a lobbyist.' You can hear the yawning start across the nation.

I've never done a movie that's shot more than 40 days because I just don't do those kinds of films.

I couldn't imagine something asking as much of me as 'House Of Cards.' It's a great warm-up for coming back to the screen.

I felt that I shouldn't be an actor who just makes movie after movie in a quest for prestige and money.

Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.

I'll tell you one thing. I've never heard a director saying that the dailies suck.

There's nothing like standing in a place and wanting nothing so much as to change but simply not being able to.

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions you'd rather not know the answers to.

It's interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

The audience, the place you're in, has everything to do with how your performance goes.

Francis Underwood was entirely based on Richard III. When Michael Dobbs wrote 'House of Cards' in the original British series, Richard III is what he based the character on.

I guess I've been training in the theater for as long as I can remember.

I don't play villainy. I wouldn't even know how to play it.

Film is very condensed.

It's not easy to sustain a long career, and sometimes I don't even think about how long I've been doing it.

But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.