Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don't get so worked up about things.

I am very much looking forward to new adventures - including, I hope, Broadway - sooner rather than later.

Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.

I'll tell you what I'm grateful for, and that's the clarity of understanding that the most important things in life are health, family and friends, and the time to spend on them.

To look out of a car in Scania, you see a painting on the horizontal - one windmill, one tiny farmhouse, acres of beet or grass.

Actors are the best and the worst of people. They're like kids. When they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad they're very very naughty.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.

I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.

I come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre.

My dad, for the first 15 years of my career, on every visit he made to a play or a film set, would find the oldest person on set and say, 'Do you think my son has a future?'

My definition of success is control.

I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.

I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.

I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.

I loved 'Kundun.'

The glory of 70mm is the sharpness of the image it offers.

What I've found about 'Cinderella' is that what it provokes in an audience is really extraordinary. It appears to be a deceptively simple tale, but I've heard nothing but people drawing all different things out of it.

I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.

I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.

My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.

I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.'

Mozart had a tremendously fertile and creative ear for a catchy tune.

I only really cast people who are desperate to be in it - who were dying to be in it, whose talent I believed in and were dead ready to do the work that was necessary.

What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.

I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'

I saw Derek Jacobi play Hamlet when I was 17, and he directed me as Hamlet when I was 27, and I directed him as Claudius in 'Hamlet' when I was 35, and I'm hoping we meet again in some other production of Hamlet before we both toddle off.

I don't know that there is too far, actually. I think there's only too bad. If it's bad you've gone too far.

I've always loved the Bond films.

I was stuck in a wheelchair playing this deranged villain. I felt this mass amount of rage at being so confined. I thought, 'What can I do that is the direct opposite of this situation?' The only thing I could think of was that I could sing and dance.

The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.

I love thrillers, and I always have.

There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.

I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.

I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.

'The Painkiller' is a remarkable play.

I suppose, at 50, you value things in a different way. So you value connections, you value your friendships, you value your health, and you are much more aware of time passing.

I'm by no means an opera buff.

Do you know what I feel about Dr. Who's? I feel the same way as I do about the Bonds. I love them all. I love them all! I don't have favorites.

How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

I'm just a normal working class boy from Belfast.

Life is surreal and beautiful.

A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.

Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.

I liked the fact that 'My Week With Marilyn' wasn't a biopic.

It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.