The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.

I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.

I do think I'm a character actor.

I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.

I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.

As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.

It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.

They're not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it's not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques.

Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.

In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.

We've always been involved with America - I have a son who lives there and it's a big part of my life.

I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.

I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.

I'd love to try my hand at something else.

I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.

The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well.

People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

I absolutely don't care about my looks and I'm so used to them that I wouldn't change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.

My primary instinct as an actor is not the big transformation. It's thrilling if a performer can do that well, but that's not me. Often with actors, it's a case of witnessing a big party piece but wondering afterwards, where's the substance?

I'm not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don't get it right or don't respect others' needs.

Hollywood hasn't aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.

I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine.

I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.

Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.

To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.

'A great British icon' is not the phrase I'd use about anybody, but there are people you admire that happen to be British. I think it's a phrase that gets attached to anyone who's been around long enough to become overfamiliar.

A life of very, very serious, po-faced films would drive me nuts. I need - and I'm fortunate to have - a fairly varied menu in that respect. I mean, I was shooting 'Mamma Mia!' at the same time as I was doing Michael Winterbottom's 'Genova'. That was a very, very bizarre summer.

Growing up, my mates and I would have rather been Sid Vicious or members of the Royal Family.

I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science in a way.

I think that, often, actors represent what they're not. You get people who define the aristocracy who are not aristocratic - they're lower-middle class or working class. An awful lot of your so-called angry young actors have grown up in extreme bourgeois comfort. It really is surprisingly common.

I've grown up surrounded by Americans and to a very large extent feel American. It sounds strange because I seem to be so quintessentially English in everyone's mind - and perhaps I am. Perhaps it's quintessentially English to have a fascination with America.

If one lazily thinks of what a fashion designer might do if he's going to conquer cinema next, it would be taking the opportunity to display his fashion sensibilities.

If you play a role, you want to familiarize yourself with that person's world. If I were playing an airline pilot or a doctor, I'd probably want to hang out with a doctor or an airplane pilot for a while, ask some questions. You don't get to hang out the kings. They don't help consult on movies. So your resources are, by necessity, secondary.

Obviously, if people love a movie, and it has the possibility of continuation, then there is going to be a question of whether it's worth doing another one. There's also cynicism and skepticism about sequels.

People coming up and saying something nice is always welcome. But when you're being secretly photographed, that's not so nice. I would rather shake hands with someone and exchange a few words than take a selfie.

Some people would say comedy draws from some dark places, from your dark stuff. Life's great optimists aren't necessarily the funniest people.