If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.

Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.

Blank House was exactly a nice empty sheet where nothing was accountable because you were so naughty that you were in Blank House.

If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.

If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.

Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.

Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.

The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne'er do well, who they'd have to keep worrying about.

Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.

The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.

My father said, If you want to do acting, you have to be successful, which is a silly thing to say.

I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.

I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.

You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive.

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.

I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.

I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.

I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.

At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.

When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.

My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.

If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.

It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.