A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, 'I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.' Oh, the theater is a scary place to be. 
I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am. 
I knew with Snape I was working as a double agent, as it turns out, and a very good one at that. 
One longs for a director with a sense of imagination. 
I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy. 
I am the character you are not supposed to like. 
I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting. 
Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made. 
If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine. 
From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other. 
I'm a lot less serious than people think. 
Originally, theater was my life. It was what I assumed I'd spend my working life doing - if I was lucky. Then along came movies. 
I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks. 
Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city. 
If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust. 
Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here. 
Mellow doesn't describe me. I'm hungry every day. 
It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it. 
Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together. 
My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident. 
I don't play villains, I play very interesting people 
If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation. 
A wounding tongue. I'm working on it. Perhaps its the Celt in me. 
The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't. 
There's a voice inside you that tells you what you should do. 
I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic. 
I love working in New York theater. 
I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously 
If you judge the character, you cant play it. 
So you can't judge the character you're playing ever. 
Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications. 
I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'. 
I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience. 
Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive. 
What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves. 
My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line. 
I have this feeling that if I could sort out what's on my dining room table, everything would fall into place. 
I suppose with any good writing and interesting characters, you can have that awfully overused word: a journey. 
I am hellbent on defying your expectations, at every turn, and even if you don't like what's being done, I dare you to find it uninteresting. 
Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we're in deep trouble. 
I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence. 
All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening. 
There is nothing wrong with a man being a Feminist, I think it is to our mutual advantage. 
I've never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision. 
I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home. 
Actors are actually very supportive of each other. 
What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing. 
When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter. 
I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom. 
We're dead as a species if we don't tell stories, because then we don't know who we are. 
I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties. 
I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time. 
A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world. 
Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch. 
It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising. 
You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else. 
Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact. 
I'm still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there's half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola. 
The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they've got the guts to say, 'I don't know.' 
Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes. 
I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure. 
Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play. 