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I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.

The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.

Everything you see on screen is real. By doing what we do, there's naturally going to be a lot of grimacing. And whimpering.

I wouldn't want you to see me all the time on the screen, because I get bored of it myself!

If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.

I go through a whole process with the actors first, building and creating characters, then I encourage them to sort of live in that character when they're in the screen.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.