I'm always afraid someone's going to tap me on the shoulder one day and say, 'Back to North London.'

I'm a pluralist. I've always argued that as many different films as possible should be made.

Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it's quite fine, so fine that the Irish don't even acknowledge that it exists.

Making a film is so hard that if you don't have your main actors going along with the ride with the rest of the crew it can make your life very difficult.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

In medicine as well as in romantic poetry, it is the heart that is the center and controlling mechanics of life. If the heart stops, life stops. The loss of sight doesn't not mean death. Yet for ages, the eyes was believed to contain a human being's vital essence - a not wholly irrational belief.

Once, I played a doctor who had a near-death experience, so I researched it, and it's impressive what people are saying about what happened to those who've been through it: it changed their lives completely, made them different people after that. I find that immensely comforting.

Surely martyrs, irrespective of the special phase of the divine idea for which they gladly give up their bodies to torture and to death, are the truest heroes of history.