The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is kill people and break things.
For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.
There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And theres a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you dont need to do so.
I'd lived in LA for two years and I said to my agent that I wouldn't do any more network TV, because my family and I had just made the decision to live in England. It would be a whole year in LA shooting network TV.
I've always had a 'Work hard, play hard' attitude to life - I still do - but sometimes you get involved in something that needs a calm, methodical approach.
In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.
It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.
We live in condensations of our imagination
Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.
It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found - in loving obedience.