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You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.

People become actors because they want to hide, and it's not easy to talk about myself. I accept that a certain responsibility goes with being an actor in the public eye, but I haven't found a comfortable way to deal with it.

People are really emotionally affected by actors. And it's hard to know how to behave in a way that doesn't impose or withdraw. Because everybody wants your attention. Everywhere you go, you know?

People are really emotionally affected by actors. And it's hard to know how to behave in a way that doesn't impose or withdraw. Because everybody wants your attention.

There are many different ways the public can respond to actors - they can see you on TV and feel they know you and own you, and there can be something quite cornering about that.

I think people are used to seeing actors be wide open and desperately giving of themselves, and while I do that on a movie set as much as I can, it's so unnatural for me to do it on television, in interviews, in anything like that. I also don't find that my process as an actor is really anyone else's business.

That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.

Actors want to surprise themselves. When it's really good, you kind of transcend yourself, and that happens infrequently. Very, very rarely.