It's funny how a film about a murderous old English toff can help you.

The world would be a duller place without Moulin Rouge.

It's funny how a film about a murderous old English toff can help you.

A make-up artist I know polished her Oscar and it lost its lustre. But if you don't polish it, it doesn't tarnish.

I do always like to do things I haven't done before, so I'm always looking out for things in a different genre, or a different sort of character.

I haven't got a writer's discipline.

I like being able to go to the supermarket and go on the Tube and have an ordinary domestic life. I'd hate to have to protect myself. I'm quite lucky that I can carry on without any intrusions. I don't get given a hard time by anyone.

I like reflecting the culture I understand best, spotting the idiosyncrasies of British people and revealing them to an audience in a way that amuses is what I find fun.

I love a really good storyline.

I never was a great Thatcher fan, and it wasn't a sad day in my life when she resigned.

I see myself as a small 'l' liberal, but not coalition liberal, necessarily.

I think we all have a selfish gene which rises to the top, sometimes. But then we're also all capable of a sudden magnanimity.

I'm not that comfortable with actors receiving honours, partly because I think they ought to go to those who really help others.

If you're playing any real person, live or dead, you certainly have a responsibility to produce that reputation in some way.

In Hollywood films everything is tidied up at the end with clean lines and clean character definitions. It's sort of unsatisfying.

In fact I'd like to go back and live in Shakespeare's London.

In today's politics, it would be good to have politicians who are more upfront about what they felt and actually not trying to bend with every breeze. They're infuriating, all of them.

It's fatal to talk about acting. It sounds faintly ridiculous if you start analysing it.

Oh, I think I've been entirely selfish with my career. I've done what I wanted to do, and not put myself out for anyone else particularly.

Other people have a much better idea of what I might do than I.

People smile at me as if they know me. I just smile back. They probably might know me.

The films I enjoy seeing are those that reveal lives I was unaware of... in different cultures or whatever.

We've all got a black book of missed opportunities.

When you research someone, you actually get beyond your own preconceptions and become aware of the human being other than the image. You become empathetic and sympathetic in turn.

You can't be angsty all day or else it becomes a sort of pale angst.

'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.

English football has just had a transfer window imposed for the first time, so it will be interesting to see how managers cope with the squads they have until it re-opens.

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand.

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben', 'Hello Rodney', 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'.

No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.

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 are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

In English we must use adjectives to distinguish the different kinds of love for which the ancients had distinct names.

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

The true sovereign is not the American president nor the English king, but the Lord of the Second Advent.

The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event.

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating.

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.