On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag for the ordinary people who are not quite sure that they are getting it right.
The question is - did Richard Attenborough have a right to make 'Gandhi?' And did Danny Boyle have a right to make 'Slumdog Millionaire?' Quite honestly, if they didn't have the right to make these films, I had no right to make 'Elizabeth.'
I go into the whole composer thing quite open to keep on going and keep on trying different things because you never know... the next idea you have might be the one.
After moving to England I did some recording and eventually formed an English band, this was together for quite a few years with only a keyboard replacement. The band had no name, just my name.
I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off.
Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter. It's that I'm almost pathologically incapable of leaving something when I'm not quite happy with it.
I need to be very isolated to write, and unfortunately isolation is often quite difficult to find. My ideal writing environment would be a country house hotel in the middle of nowhere, with full room service.
My character in 'Fresh Meat' is quite prim and tidy, and then I basically had no make-up for the whole shoot of 'Kidnap and Ransom' - apart from a bit of Vaseline to make me look even sweatier!
The book tour has been really interesting and very gratifying. I have not book toured before. I've never had quite as much pleasure, as much satisfaction.
I think the interesting thing about the word 'posh' is that it is so relative; it's quite a provocative title because people have strong feelings about that word.
Apparently, despite my awareness of its pejorative connotation, procrastinating is something I fall victim to quite frequently. I'm not proud of it; I'm just being honest.
I know quite a few eco designers who build dresses out of old couture gowns. They disassemble, 'upcycle,' and reuse them in extraordinary ways. To me, that's a sustainable way of doing things.
There's something quite joyful about doing comedy which doesn't really need much analysis. I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.
I think some people see me as being some kind of lovable, bumbling buffoon, and I'm actually quite mouthy and sharp, and that doesn't compute.
As I said, when we needed to move over to rock'n'roll, Sam and Vernon couldn't quite make the shift. So that's when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.
I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role wh...
I saw Al Foster with Miles Davis the other week. It was beautiful. But, the whole thing was, Al Foster played as well as everybody else, but all of them were quite brilliant under Miles Davis' direction.
I think that in the realm of commercial, popcorn cinema, the amount of message or smuggling of ideas you can get in there is quite limited. Like, if you think you're going to make a difference or change anything, you're on pretty dangerous thin ice.
I can think of no other experience quite like that of being 20 or so pages into a book and realizing that this is the real thing: a book that is going to offer the delicious promise of a riveting story, arresting language and characters that will hau...
I've had a bit of experience at lots and lots of different arenas as it were, some of them completely creative, some of them quite technical. The interesting thing is, is that I found that the technical arenas actually are also very creative or can b...
I, for one, am quite willing to join the 'forgive, forget and move on' crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the famil...
