I grew up in Manchester, and we were very poor. My father was a miner who joined the Navy during the war and developed a lung disease and had to have a lung removed.
I knew the story of 'War Horse' very well. I had read the book even before I did the auditions. I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo.
I was terrified of the Vietnam War when I was 13. I thought I was going. The draft was such an ominous thing, I felt as if it was going to trickle down to me.
Of course, I also attribute some of my hearing loss to being in the infantry in World War II. It's probably a combination of heredity and noise exposure.
During the war, my mother used to take me to the local repertory theatre on a Monday night, and we used to get two seats for the price of one, for nine pence, in the gods.
You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope.
I know it's inevitable that there will be those who compare 'The Pacific' to 'Band of Brothers.' For years, the Pacific theater of war was not talked about as much as the European theater, yet it was part of the same war.
'The Hunger Games' takes place in Panem, a country which is part of America. It's post-apocalyptic. There's been a global war. The Panem country is what remains of this hugely destructive war.
Most of my nightmares that jolt me awake either involve the cosmos or something completely out of human control. In reality, I worry more about nuclear war, or war in general.
I was interested in the war part of 'Star Wars,' so I started reading about what it's like to go to war, what that does to you psychically, about the adrenaline and the rush.
I've taken clowns into the war in Bosnia, the refugee camps of Kosovo, and none of those are any more important than clowning in a subway or an elevator or just walking down the street.
It fills me with a weird rage to wear shoes that make me not able to walk easily or run if I had to. It feeds into this whole 'war on women' thing in my head.
There was no real fringe theatre in London until way after the war, so either a play was done secretly with a club licence or it was done openly and had to be assessed along with everything else.
I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.
R.K. Maroon: How much do you know about show business, Mr. Valiant? Eddie Valiant: Only that there is no business like it, no business I know. R.K. Maroon: Yeah. And there's no business more expensive. I'm 25 grand over budget on the latest Baby Herm...
There was something about other people's grief that was so exposing, so personal, that she felt she shouldn't be looking.
As human beings we value the experience that comes with age. We are reminded over and over again with statements like 'older and wiser' and 'respect your elders,' promoting age as something to be cherished and respected.
People think I must have been so talented at an early age, but I don't know - was it talent or hard work? Who knows?
I'm very accepting with my age. It's like notches on your belt: experience, wisdom, and a different kind of beauty. There comes a day when you've become comfortable in your skin.
Women are smart in business and dumb in love. They won't date outside their zip code, let alone outside the city. They are city snobs.
If there is anything about your 'self' of which you can be sure, it is that it is anchored in your own body and yours alone. The person you experience as 'you' is here and now and nowhere else.
