I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are prett...
As soon as someone tells me: 'You're rather sexy,' I wish I could disappear. If somebody says: 'You were voted the world's sexiest man,' I have no idea what that means. How do I respond? 'Thank you' is the best you can do. George Clooney is the world...
I use a Bruce Lee technique: 'The way of no way.' He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not ...
Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields - uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we'll get better ideas than we...
I have an idea about building almost like a studio for some of the best Tropfest filmmakers, so they can come together and support and be given space and resources they need to tell great stories year around, so it's not just about the festivals. You...
I always recommend, if you can, to patent or protect whatever your idea is. If you can't, you have to make your best judgment. Sometimes people don't get anywhere because they sit on something, so afraid to reveal it. And yet, in the reverse, sometim...
I talked my parents into sending me to Roedean at 16. I had this idea that if I could get into Cambridge, then I could join Footlights. My problem was that I went to a comprehensive in Brighton. I thought I'd have to start from a good school, and the...
My two best friends have gone through break-ups that were really hard, and I remember thinking, 'How could this be so hard and important to them?' Literally for months they were really upset and they couldn't get over it. I had no idea what it was li...
With kiting, you have to land a trick, and in that instant you know whether you won or lost - I knew I could become the best in the world if I trained. But with acting, there are different variations; there's not a right or wrong way. It's so hard be...
I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as 'us' and 'them' - he doesn't care whether you're a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above... he knows that we all love our country... and he's always ready to listen to good ideas... he's always...
The brilliant thing about swimming is that, while you're doing it, there's nothing else you could be getting on with, like the ironing or sorting out the children. My mind goes into free-float mode; some of the best ideas for plots come into my head ...
Got an idea to start", "Thinking to start" and "Making a commitment to start" is one aspect of life. Actually "Starting" what you truly want to do in life, is a completely different ball game.
To work for the sheer joy of it, to wake up and be really excited on a Monday, to love what you do so much that the idea of a long vacation looks boring - that's living.
What am I to do? What is my destiny? I have no idea, not a clue Feeling lost and empty. What is my dream? What is my future? I beg thee to listen to me, I beg thee to answer.
I, made in England, felt excluded, miffed, resistant to the idea of even visiting India, a position of increasing absurdity as, one by one, backpacking friends returned from the place with the standard anecdotal combo of nirvanic epiphany and toilet ...
As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people about, and making settings for them to move in, so there's always something there to keep working on.
I haven't been out in the marketplace in a while. I'm thinking about going back into it. I've got some things set up over the next couple of months just to go and see. But I have no idea what the specific way to a solution is anymore. It's mysterious...
I'm very different to my mum. I'm not as beautiful as she is, nor - she probably despairs about this - as groomed. I certainly rebelled against her idea of looking well turned-out. I spent several years with a shaved head in jeans and baggy shirts.
I was glad that I could be used as a focal point to possibly bandy around some ideas, and maybe people would open their eyes to Obama's socialist ideology. However, there were so many important issues to be discussed other than the 'Joe the Plumber, ...
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?
I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture.
