I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.
London has this culture of the theatre that is so big, it was a like a dream - but I never had a thought to be able to play here because my English was not very good. So being given the opportunity to come work here was like a gift.
I've done both theatre and film and the fact is if you start believing, if you start reading things and they're good reviews - you believe that and you're lost, and then you read bad reviews and you think that's true and you read that and you're lost...
Having learnt my basics in theatre, I always feel film is a collaborative effort. If you do your part well and help the person in front of you in realising his or her potential, the film invariably comes out good.
Individual and corporate support is vital to building on London's leadership in the arts, and I hope others will join me in wanting to build on the National's role at the heart of modern theatre and sustaining it long into the future.
I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life.
The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyda...
It's true: theatre has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I always liked everything about it. As a child, I used to get so excited about performing, I'd get the giggles.
I'm really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can't afford to at the moment because we're getting married in September. And then I'm hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay.
By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.
Suddenly we saw that you could do plays about real life, and people had been doing them for some time, but they weren't always getting to the audiences. They were performed in little, tiny, theatres.
I just love the hours of the theatre, I love the way it operates. I always say that when you're doing a play it's like getting a shot of B12, and when you do television for a long series you need a shot of B12.
Acting was merely a pastime; I wanted to make films. But theatre, ah - now that was a labour of love. Can there be anything better than performing without retakes and cuts, in front of people you can see, hearing them breathe in the darkness of the h...
In the theatre, once you've gone about eight rows back, everybody else is just listening to you. You're very small, and nobody can really see what you're doing.
Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.
I came up almost completely through the subsidised theatre. I have never been absolutely at the market interface, where I've got to sell my wares or die - I've always been protected from that.
For me, making films is like being on vacation, it's a nice walk. But theatre is like mountaineering. You never know whether you're going to fall off or make it to the top.
Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that... I know that.'
I went to a lot of theatre schools, got a lot of training, did a lot of repertory where you do a different play every night. I took a lot of voice, movement, and acting classes.
So for me, it can be theatre or being in L.A. or in some other part of the world, as long as I can explore storytelling and human connection through storytelling, I'm quite content.
My representation overseas can't stand me doing theatre because it takes me out of action. But it's what I want to do. If it means passing up other possibilities, them's the breaks.
