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I come from a tradition where the writer writes a play for the actors, rather than for himself, and the dialogue is made to work onstage, so it needs actors to help shape it. So you never get a play right straightaway.

But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

As an actor, I've always been interested in making sure I can perform the role and the lines in the way the writer intended.

I believe, and this is perhaps too nationalistic a view, that the American style of acting puts actors quickly in touch with each other, so that their continuous presence in a company, as in England, is not absolutely necessary.

At any period of an actor's life, it's fairly likely that they'll be cast in ways that are reminiscent. That's the way it goes.

With most British actors, it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.

I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.

I'm just a hired actor who was hired for a particular job, but I think one of the joys of reading the script was the way that the personal and the global are woven together.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.