“Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel...” — William Hurt Quote

Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.

I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.

The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.

When you are a kid, you are beset by fears, and you think, 'I'll solve the fear by living forever and becoming a movie star.'

Play is play, fun is fun, and work is work. They're different. I work hard; even if it's supposed to be fun for someone else, it's work for me.

I wanted to take up music, so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.

It's man's work. My dad was gone at 4:30 in the morning and home at 8 at night, and he worked underground, and the last mine he worked in was 26 inches high in a lot of places. He liked the engineering of it - he liked the moving the earth and being able to extract something and put it back for reclamation. He enjoyed the whole process.

I met Gemma, my wife, when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later, she started coming to my concerts, but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was, and that's how it started.

I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please.