It was a sort of organic thing. I never went, 'I must be an actress.' I thought, 'I think I could do this. I think I could be good at this.' I would just get sort of hungry when I read something I thought I can do well, whether it was in books or in scripts or if I saw a certain movie. It sort of happened quite naturally.
You're always looking for good scripts and when they're not always forthcoming you go mad.
I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another.
I was reading through endless junk scripts that were being sent my way. Typically the roles were to play his wife or his girlfriend - leading roles for women were few and far between.
I have, for a few years, been writing comedy prose - short pieces for my blog - because I found it to be a good way to write while I was on a TV show. It was different enough from my scripts that it felt like a break, but it still was comedy and very fun. I like to do comedy!
I was on vacation with my family when I got the scripts for 'Wanderlust' and I was trying to work on the audition while I was on vacation. I remember a big gust of wind blew the entire script into the pool, so I had to dry it with a hairdryer.
I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.
I am fortunate that I get sent scripts and get to meet people I would never have met had I not done 'Harry Potter.' But I feel I had to come out of that show and prove that I am not a one trick pony and can do other stuff.
If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.
When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.
I'm really calculating when it comes to these scripts - I'm really calculated about character behavior and dialogue.
Oftentimes, in fact I think this is to my fault, I look at usually scripts as a whole. I should probably pay more attention to the character that I'm going to play and what they do.
People recognize me, I have scripts, and auditions. And I meet great people.
I never do any television without chocolate. That's my motto and I live by it. Quite often I write the scripts and I make sure there are chocolate scenes. Actually I'm a bit of a chocolate tart and will eat anything. It's amazing I'm so slim.
And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here, but there are a lot of terrible scripts in this town.
Now I can broadcast to an audience of several million people on the 'Today' programme. I can talk about the day's news. But on radio, believe it or not, we have notes and scripts. And while we might ad lib the odd wryly amusing asides, they come at the frequency of a suburban bus. About one every 90 minutes.
I'd like to start writing scripts. I think I'd probably be inclined to write a very dark comedy or a tragic romance. As a kid, I used to write really dark stuff.
There's editing, and scripts to read and edit, and casting, and all the elements of production that just sort of take up the normal downtime that you would have as an actor. So there's not a lot of that for me.
If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'
I left 'Dr Who' after 18 months, as my character was going nowhere. In truth, I wished I had never gone into it. Afterwards, all the scripts that came my way were for 15-year olds.
I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.
Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors.
I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page... sunrise over the desert and masses of... a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.
I've been amazed watching people who are not ready with their scripts when they're getting a lot of attention.
I feel that I can't do certain things that have sent to me, scripts, because I think that really - I've been June Cleaver for so many years, because we went back, you know, and we did - 20-year hiatus we had - and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won't do.
As a filmmaker, I don't want to limit myself to one kind of movie. After 'Headhunters,' I went to Hollywood and read a lot of scripts: lots of action thrillers and heist movies, and superhero films.
I'm so bored of reading scripts with these wonderfully complex male roles, yet the woman character just sits on the bed waiting for him to come home.
I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.
When an actor asks you to read his script, your heart sinks. The number of scripts I've been given by actors that are so unbelievably terrible!
Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.
My m.o. as far as choosing projects is I really try not to work. I try to not do the scripts that are offered me. I'm in this wonderful position to be able to do that. The reason I do that is because I know what it takes once I engage, what that means for me personally and for my wife.
I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month.
I had a very insightful friend who warned me back when I stopped reading scripts, 'It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.' If you stop, it's harder to get started again. I still don't think I made the wrong decision, but he was right.
J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.
I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.
'Police Story' had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases.
