For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.
For a few years, I thought I was putting show business behind me. I was busy doing other things in life, particularly with politics. I was not out looking for films, really. I lost interest.
Although I'm largely doing other things in life, it's very nice occasionally to put my toe back in the waters of show business.
I think I'm rather young and sprightly, but then you see pictures of yourself and think, 'Who is that old man?' and I realise I'm not as young as I thought I was.
I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I... probably can't!
After I found that I had become an actor, slightly to my surprise, I did have some insecurity, and I did take some rather strange acting classes at a place called The Actor's Studio in London. I don't think they did me any good at all.
I'm not a great believer in marriages as an institution, or even in very long term relationships. I'm not sure we're built that way.
Strangely enough I'm better on a stage. I love that I feel like I blossom in front of a whole bunch of people.
Do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year-long monogamous, faithful, relationships? No, No, No. Whoever said they were? Only the Bible or something. No one ever said that was a good idea.
But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you're an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.
With 2 movies opening this summer, I have no relaxing time at all. Whatever I have is spent in a drunken stupor.
Courage is soldiers fighting on the front line, or people living on the bread line.
My laziness is really profound. I'm really interested in where it comes from - it almost feels chemical. And we've all got ADD now, short attention span and all that.
Like lots of people who say, 'I'm going to write a novel,' it's actually more comfortable to think I could write a novel than to discover that you can't.
I have this absurd syndrome where I get these out-of-the-blue, pathetic panic attacks. It'll be in a very easy, simple scene when everything is going swimmingly, and then suddenly, bang, I'm shvitzing and can't remember my lines.
'Notting Hill?' Does that poke fun at being British? Maybe it does. In 'Mickey Blue Eyes,' that's kind of the point: the clash of worlds, the unlikely combo of a respectable Englishman and a mob guy. If you take out the Britishness, you don't really have much.
I used to dream about Gorbachev before he lost power. I'd go into a panic because I was meeting him, and I had nothing to wear. I'd ask my brother what to do, and he'd tell me to wear my dressing gown. I'd tell him I can't - it's too horrible. He'd tell me to wear his as well. So I'd meet Gorbachev wearing two dressing gowns.
I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I'm learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed.
My contemporary art collection began with just needing to put things on the wall. I was looking around my Victorian house thinking, 'What would be the coolest is contemporary art - it will make me look young and interesting.' I'm more than 80 percent skeptical of the whole thing.
If you do too much acting in a lead part in a feature film where you're 40 ft. high, it's rather unattractive. You can see the acting. And it's actually the right thing to do to bring as much of yourself, I believe, to the part as you possibly can - to minimize the amount of theatrical stuff that you need to do.
A free press is the cornerstone of democracy; there is no question about that.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of acting: character acting and lead acting. And in my life, to begin with, in the 1980s, it was all character acting. And then when, by fluke, through 'Four Weddings', I got into doing lead parts, it's a completely different thing.
Love scenes are extremely difficult. You're always within a millimeter of sentimentality and 'yuck.'
At home, I hardly ever leave London. I don't like the countryside in England.
My mother was a teacher.
I had a kiss with Raquel Welch's daughter - she was a very naughty kisser.
I get very annoyed when people think I'm nice or diffident or a polite English gentleman. I'm a nasty piece of work, and people should know that.
I'm a terrible vacillator; I can be sure of something one day and change my mind the next.
It's very true that you can be both selfless and selfish at the same time. What we tend towards, particularly in filmmaking, is this binary sort of, 'This is a good guy, this is a bad guy.' And I quite like the fact that life is a bit more complex than that.
I don't hate L.A., but I'm nervous about becoming one of those people who has a ferocious interest in how films did at the box office that weekend and, you know, would want to meet for egg-white omelets in the morning.
