I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.
— Colin Firth
If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.
Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.
One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.
To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.
My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.
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.
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
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.
My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.
The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well.
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.
