It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

You can't please all the people all the time.

And there's no way I'm going to do Dame Edna.

But I hope that you walk around the corner and you get very surprised.

You can have a laugh in Los Angeles, or you can weep in Los Angeles, depending on your attitude towards it.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

It makes me feel resilient when you tackle different things.

Somebody referred to me as a ringleader, which I wouldn't have classed myself as, but anyway, there you go.

I would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting.

Feminism was a dirty word for a while.

For years, I never knowingly went on a holiday. When I travelled, it was for work. Now I am a huge advocate, particularly to places which have amazing wildlife, such as Antarctica, India and Patagonia.

I carry music in my head, so I don't need more. It drives me nuts that, in hotels or on boats, people seem to think you need music 24 hours a day.

I don't necessarily wait for that massive leading role. I want to keep the juices flowing.

I have no idea what my persona would be. As far as I'm concerned, I'm changing all the time.

I like the personality of the Belgians. They're deeply eccentric, which is something that comes across in their design - terrific.

I need my friends, I need my house, I need my garden.

I wouldn't want to go back to my 20s; they were pretty angst-laden times.

I'm not someone who can lie on a beach and do nothing. I am not sure what you are supposed to do, so I get bored. I prefer to have a purpose, such as going to Alaska to see orca whales.

If I don't believe in a role, I can't pull it off.

If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that's the old definition of a star, someone who's always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don't want to think of the job like that.

In my industry, everybody wants to know everything about you, and it's just dumb. I think the only way of maintaining some of that mystique is by not giving away too much about yourself. It has served me well so far. I never want to feel up for grabs.

It's difficult to keep in touch with someone when you're moving around all the time. I've decided that you can have it all, but you can't have it all, all of the time.

It's the idea that when you say 'actress', people think of an airy, floaty, no-brain person, which of course you can't be if you are an actor. It is an unfortunate word, which is why, for a time, I hung on to 'actor', because it just seemed more workmanlike, you know, like you say 'woman doctor' not 'doctoress'.

London keeps me grounded. We don't get praised every time we open our gobs there.

The writing is the springboard for your intuitive stuff and then you see, maybe a colour of what you want to achieve. Then you bring in the technique you've learnt. But when you're on film, you're not always in control of that. That's what makes me believe in a kind of collective unconscious, a sort of experience you draw on.

Why did I not stop to have children? I suppose because the opportunity didn't present itself. Yes, many women feel they are not complete without having children, but I have different creative outlets.

When you left on Saturday, I felt a horrible void, I saw you everywhere, on the beach, in your room, in the garden: impossible for me to get used to the idea that you had left.

Of course The Beach Boys will be camp.

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I like to cook, walk on the beach, go to concerts and look at fine art.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

I've never been one to run around in Speedos on the beach.

You know, The Beach Boys' image is kinda like a group Doris Day, you know what I mean?

The pictures we saw before we got down here didn't even touch the reality of what it is like being here. We can be right on the beach with all the devastation and still not be able to imagine what it was like when the wall of water actually came up.

I've been kind of submerged in my own little geographic location for a really long time in Venice Beach.

We filmed one scene on the beach and there was definitely weird energy around, and we were followed around by a white owl to several different locations, and little things like that, or certain mishaps would happen and you'd have to wonder what that was about.

The British are so funny. It's like they can't believe I lived in Hackney. 'You could live in Bondi Beach. Why would you want to live in 'Ackney?' But Hackney's fantastic. I'm serious. There are so many artists there. I loved the markets, the parks, the pubs, the diversity. It was a cultural melting-pot.

I rent houses in LA when I'm filming. I find the isolation there terrifying. There's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to be with people. I'm not a beach bunny.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

The moon is essentially gray, no color. It looks like plaster of Paris, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.

And I was in another band called Flash In The Pan, which was soca, Latin music, down in Laguna Beach.

They were heading out to the middle of the bay - the Gulf - that's another thing that became kind of standard practice, we didn't hurry the destroyers around the beach any more, when it got dark, we'd take 'em out thirty or forty miles out in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf.

I manage a team, for beach soccer. I'm the coach. Player, coach.

If Frank and The Beach Boys got together and did a Super Session album, it would be a gas.

There will always be a Beach Boys. Being a Beach Boy is like being in love.

I used to paint landscapes without any people in them but now I paint people who happen to be in a particular place. They might be outside a pub, or on a beach or in a studio. They might have clothes on or they might not.

I can't wait to be that age and hanging out with a bunch of people hanging out all day playing golf and going to the beach, all my own age. We'd be laughing and having a good time and getting loopy on our prescription drugs. Driving golf carts around. I can't wait.