I think men under pressure - I mean, that's what brings out the worst and the best of us. I like to explore that quite a bit in my characters because I don't see a lot of it on the screen that moved me like the films that I grew up with - that are honest, at least, about honest emotions and honest heroism.
Popularizing - much less venturing beyond one's secure turf - was frowned upon for many years. I think I probably internalized the prohibition, even though I was - and knew I was - among the best speakers and writers of my age cohort. I don't mean I was the best historian - a quite different measure.
If you've developed an ideology that what's good for you personally also happens to be good for everyone else, that's quite wonderful because there's no moral tension.
One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.
I know people like to work for me, and quite a few have gotten rich working for me.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
I find my vocabulary is quite a lot better when I'm hungover. I feel like I unlock a key of words that I don't usually use in day-to-day life.
I think we're in a disposable world and 'Stairway to Heaven' is one of the things that hasn't quite been thrown away yet.
Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself.
I'm quite interested in my own mental processes, simply because I'm a failed scientist, and because I'm interested in how the brain and the mind works, and I like to avoid easy descriptions.
I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.
I saw this cool interview with Amy Adams from when she did 'Enchanted' and played a princess, and when kids came up to her with no make-up and ripped jeans on, she said, 'I'm off duty. I'm an off-duty princess', and I thought that was quite sweet.
I'm quite fond of Switzerland. I love Switzerland.
I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
I've found that when you roll up your sleeves and join people in their daily work, they tend to open up quite a bit and let you know what they really think about the issues facing our country and what kind of job they think the government is doing.
My love songs are very personal and quite weird. They don't really have the big radio hit choruses because basically they're my therapy, stuff I have to get off my chest.
I endured quite a few injuries when I was younger and had my first surgery on my foot when I was 15. But I love dancing. 'Anna Karenina' was great for me as it meant I could combine the two and I actually went back and did some classes.
Because I came to acting quite late, I kind of think one of the few attributes that I do have is that I try to be honest with the character, with the writing. I'm not a tricksy actor; I'm not exactly a scenery-chewing kind of actor.
Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer;' I watched it some 20 times as a kid.
I'm not quite used to being seen through the eyes of fans yet. Being met with squeals and screams - I haven't gotten used to that.
The great security of all is to eat little and to drink nothing that intoxicates. He that eats till he is full is little better than a beast, and he that drinks till he is drunk is quite a beast.
I record stuff all the time, like little vocal things. I write random things down... Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and I record them, and that actually becomes a song quite a lot of the time.
There's nothing I find quite as annoying as the phrase 'I told you so.'
The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail.
If I'm going to dress up, I like things that are quite long and classic. I like feeling dressed up and like a lady.
Yeah, my son likes a lot of guitar bands. He gave me something the other day which was really good. He'll burn a CD for me full of things that he has, so he's a pretty good call if I want to check some of that stuff out... The other two aren't quite into that yet.
A lot of people glorify and romanticize the idea of being an early bloomer: finding success very early and being a child star. But it can also be quite dangerous.
I guess you could say I'm 'kind' to my past books in the way you might be kind to an old boyfriend you still quite like and bear no grudge against but with whom have absolutely no interest in getting back together.
The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.
There are risks in the sheer brevity of Twitter, and it's actually quite an elegant art reducing what you have to say to 140 characters, and it's something that I quite enjoy attempting to do.
You sit there, and you argue and you argue, and you sort of bully the hell out of the text until you're quite sure what it's revealing, and then you perform it.
If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.
There was quite a lot of lying around in fields at Stonar, a small independent girls' school in the country near Bath. It was a non-selective school and the right environment for me: academically not particularly pushy.
I transcend earthly bounds. I never cease to amaze myself because I haven't yet found my limits. I am quite ready to accept the limits of what I can do, but every time I feel that way - boom! - God touches me and I do something that's even more stupendous than whatever I've done up to then.
'Almost' is all about gradations and nuance and about suggestion and shades. Not quite a red wine, but not crimson, not purple either, or maroon; come to think of it, 'almost' Bordeaux.
Having started in theatre, for a long time I wanted to be a classical actress. But I've always loved making people laugh - at school, I was quite mischievous, and bit by bit, I found myself working more and more in comedy.
