I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch.

The fact is that young people are going to have sex whether you like it or not.

The trouble is it's very difficult to pin-point the most important thing because Aids affects everyone in different levels of society, differently and you have to respond to it differently.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.

I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.

But certainly in Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa, people don't really talk about sex and certainly religious leaders - some of them - up to now have been very unwilling to accept, for instance, the promotion of condom use.

We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really.

But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.

If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.

I've a problem with the word charity because I think that NGOs, as I prefer calling them, really do take the work of moral and social responsibilities that ought to be taken on by governments.

We need men and women to sit down and talk to each other about sex honestly and openly. That would help us fight Aids so immediately. But our lack of communication is hugely problematic.

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.

What was important was trying to create something that families could watch together and enjoy together.

The Catholic Church - it's so difficult because I don't want say anything offensive but it makes me very angry that religious leaders from this faith have tried to respond negatively to sexual education and to the promotion of condom use.

Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.

I don't have technique because I never learnt any.

I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch.

I think that my work is my attempt, I suppose, is to try and become a piece of connective tissue. I'm trying to communicate with people here and in America - in rich countries - about what I see on the ground in badly affected areas.

And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here?

My worst quality is impatience.

If you don't want women to do whatever they need to do then you must provide them with food, you must provide them with shelter and their basic human rights.

Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.

It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.

I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic - basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately.

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.

My appearance has changed a lot over the years, but it has far more to do with how I feel about being a woman.

A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.

Tell him I mind having to look pretty, that's what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort.

I think the point about ActionAid is what it's asking people to do is engage with poor people in developing countries and understand what their lives are like and understand how the way we live our lives impacts on theirs.

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.

If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.

British arent really known for their physical loveliness but firemen generally speaking are gorgeous.

Any problem big or small within a family always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isnt listening.

Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life.

Without the ice, the earth will fall.

Diets are the best way of confusing your metabolism for the rest of your life. Just be you & get on with it.

We all need somewhere where we feel safe.

The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great, so that everyone looks forward to it.

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.