Get on with life because life gets on without you.
I thought "I've coped with some crazy situations, and I can do this. " But working with Roman Polanski is so different from the fashionable and accepted way of directing now.
It was as big as a Beatles concert, I guess. Friends was unbelievably popular in Britain, and it was incredibly exciting. I had never experienced anything quite like that before in my life. I was honored to be a part of that.
My parents are both lawyers, and my father always said his best cases have been returns, cases that come into his office from another lawyer. So he said, "Never be ashamed to take a return. " All my best roles have happened because someone else dropped out at the last minute, and God bless those actresses for their queeny fits, their sprained ankles, their better job turning up, because that's how I've got my best work.
I am a pathetic and gushing Nick Hornby fan, and I wanted to be in High Fidelity, and I wanted to be in About A Boy, and those two directors - one who's a dear friend, and one who has never cast me in anything, despite my pleading. . . So there was another Nick Hornby script going around being cast by a friend of mine, and she said, "There's a very small role in it, but you'd be right for it. " I was like "I don't care how small, I'm going to be in this Nick Hornby film. "
Carey Mulligan is completely self-possessed. She knows what she's doing, and again, quite like the big-hitters I was talking about, my job was just to feel and reflect back the amazing performance coming my way. If anything, I was slightly pathetically flying in her tailwind. She's an extraordinary actress.
When The Sixth Sense was the No. 1 movie in America, I had a Canadian boyfriend whose only assets at the time were a guitar and a van. I don't know what I was thinking.
Everybody is in trouble, including the up-and-coming economic miracles of China, Brazil or India.
So we strive for perfection in the areas in which we can control, and that isn't necessarily what provides contentment and joy for ourselves and, more importantly, for our children.
Be grateful for what you already have, and you will attract more good things.
My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised.