Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

I'd always liked the idea that drama acts at its best as a kind of arena for debate, not just about the thing itself, but also producing aesthetic, stylistic, political and moral discussions.

I’ve never had a desire to be famous. Lots of actors are actually extremely shy. I have shy areas.

I don’t have the energy or the mental security to get involved with all that. I think it’s a good idea to be able to disappear into the story, so that the first thing the audience sees isn’t you, but the part.

People will say that it’s some kind of evasion, but I would never want to have a kid for me. I’d want to have the child for the child’s sake, if that makes sense.

It’s taken me longer still to realize what a short span there is between those life experiences and the rest of your life. That’s a job for the people who lived through it.

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don’t readily advertise themselves unless they’re not living in Moscow, and even then. I’m sure I’ve met some without realizing it.

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.

I always want to do things that are different. I don’t want to be doing the same thing, the same performance constantly, and it feels like most people tell you that they are the same. However different you feel might approach them.

I read about this hotel that was great, down in the south of the island, not in a touristy area. I had no particular desire ever to go to Jamaica, but I thought, what the hell? Sounds nice. Let’s go!