I avoided nudity unless a film couldn't be told without those scenes. If you look at my films, few of them have that element, yet nudity and male fantasies have become emblematic of my work.

Two people can make love but that isn't necessarily love.

The only work I did for the next five years after splitting from Vincent was work I'd already lined up.

I feel lucky, happy and philosophical about it all.

On the stage, you alone hold the key, and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.

A relationship requires a lot of work and commitment.

Having had a reputation for being sexy is a great prop to lean on now.

I'm a heathen when it comes to marriage.

I had the conviction that lovemaking fools you. The overpowering emotions it induces make you think you're sharing the same feelings as the other person and that they're imagining the same as you.

It helped me when I decided that we're on this planet to learn to live together and get along.

I always knew it was going to be difficult when I got beyong 40, but I didn't realise it would start at 35.

My father was absent and he was a hero to me.

I've been through some very difficult stages in my life, but I wouldn't change anything.

I avoided nudity unless a film couldn't be told without those scenes. If you look at my films, few of them have that element, yet nudity and male fantasies have become emblematic of my work.

Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible; you are in the driving-seat.

I have done everything I can to make sure my daughter knows her father because you form your own identity by rebelling against your parents - but first you have to know them.

I want to come across as a positive person.

With a theatre audience there's always the additional sense of a sustained challenge of which I'm acutely aware and for which you need to have the tools ready - your voice, physicality, brain.

I have invested some money and I have a home, but people don't realise that you might only be working for a few weeks of the year and remain unemployed the rest of the time.

In many ways, when you're young and sexy, it's very annoying to be whistled at and to have someone always trying to attract your attention, but now when it happens I find myself registering the fact almost warmly.

I look for people who're passionate, dedicated to the text, and in whom I trust completely.

Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.

I came to Ireland 20 years ago as a student, hitch-hiking round for a week and staying in Dublin.

Hollywood will accept actresses playing ten years older, but actors can play ten years younger.

You seldom get that in film where you're lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.

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.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.