I got involved in script development from the beginning. It was nice to see how a film gets made right from the beginning. It was quite hands-on for me.

In terms of jumping into a character's skin, I try to immerse myself in the role as much as possible to bring me closer to them. All I do is what's required to achieve what I want to achieve.

Method acting is a label I don't really understand, because there's a method to everybody's acting.

Fairfax was incredibly important to the shaping of the country.

I just love jumping into someone else's life. It is a relatively cheap way to experience things you would be too scared to contemplate in your own life.

People go to see a film because it's a great story and it's visually exciting to watch.

Sometimes you just can't walk away from films you're offered, like the Dylan Thomas thing.

Being a salesman and an actor were not that dissimilar: It is a good lesson in covering up your feelings. No one wants to buy from someone who looks depressed.

I'm doing a Dylan Thomas film, Map of Love, with Mick Jagger producing again. It's a wonderful script.

I don't like acting things; I like feeling things.

I got involved in script development from the beginning. It was nice to see how a film gets made right from the beginning. It was quite hands-on for me.

You're making a movie, not a documentary. If you made a film like the historians would like you to make, you're not going to go and see it. I'd rather see paint dry.

It's difficult to get films made, especially films about poets.

Sometimes people say to you that you should try to be in a bigger film, but it's the way it pans out.

I am an actor through and through.

You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.

Sometimes it is easier to play someone who is far away from you.

What was the reason for invading Iraq' Was it a humanitarian crusade or an economic one' I would be inclined to say the latter. It was the same with the Civil War, because the landed gentry's money was being stolen by the king.

The point is to be involved in the moment.

My focus never wavered; I never accepted the film was not going to be finished.

It quite often happens that they attach a name to a project and it doesn't get all the financing it needs.

The success of the film is down to the crew.

When you do bigger films, the financiers take more risks.

With the situation now, people might be intrigued to see how a country coped with war all those years ago.

I try and do films I know I'm going to enjoy watching as well as being in.

You'd have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story, but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don't make movies; we do.

You couldn't take football away from me, you couldn't take acting away from me.

You grow up a lot in terms of your understanding of the industry and how to deal with the corporate things.

When I'm playing a character like Jonathan in Ripley's Game I want to be in the moment when he's feeling pain; this very ordinary person who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.

It's nice to be asked to do good projects.

I tend to do golf charity things because it's much safer and you don't get much chance of a broken arm or leg.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

The people who voted for President Obama are just beginning to wake up to exactly what they brought in. The 'change' they envisioned is not the 'change' they have gotten.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

In the beginning it was all black and white.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

At the beginning of 1955 only about 60 percent of American homes had TVs.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.

I am pleased to see that information campaigns, such as the America's WETLAND effort, are getting the message out, and people are beginning to realize that wetlands loss in Louisiana affects us all.

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning.