quotes
on his movies
"[My fans] say, 'I've seen Star Wars and Moulin Rouge!. What else should we try to see you in?' I always tell 'em to get The Pillow Book. That would be a bit of an eye-opener for them, wouldn't it?"

on cynism
"I fight cynicism. It's too easy. It's really boring. It's much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren't as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented."

on family
"I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the end."

on his uncle
"My uncle would appear back from London, where he lived in the 70s, in sheepskin waistcoats and beads and no shoes. As an actor he had something about him that I liked and wanted to have. So that's one element: to be like my uncle, to be different"

on school
"My brother is two years older than me and he was brilliant at everything, it seemed. He was captain of the cricket and rugby teams. We had this rather archaic system of head boys and prefects at my school. I was in my fourth year - in Scotland we finish school in our sixth year - and my brother had become head boy and brilliant at everything: academia, sports. In fact, all the things I wasn't good at. Then he left and I couldn't get my head round anything, so I became depressed and got in trouble a lot. I remember my mother driving me one night through heavy rain, with the windscreen wipers going. It was the first half term of my fifth year and she said that she'd spoken to my dad and that I could leave school if I wanted to. I'd only assumed that I'd have to stick it out until I was 18, but here I was being offered the chance to leave at 16. My whole world opened up. I couldn't believe it. And I was out, as soon as she said those words."

on Crieff
"The Knock in Crieff is a very special place to me. It reminds me of childhood holidays, of freedom and getting up to no good!"

on films
"I'm terrible at seeing films, I just don't have the time, I'm not alone, as any parent of young children will tell you, it's very difficult to get out. I always live in hope I'll get to see the new ones in the cinema and then just don't see them. This morning there was a questionaire asking what my favourite film was of last year and I couldn't remember having seen any films at all!"

on acting
"As an actor there's nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It's so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head."

on working with directors
"It's not my job to try and alter the director's style - he's in charge, and I'll always give him my trust. I think what happens is that you learn how to deal with it if you're not getting the support you need or if you're not being pushed. Occasionally you're doing two jobs at once: you're fooling the director into thinking you've taken his note while doing what you think is better. It hasn't happened very often, but it's an awful thing when you lose your trust in a director. But it's not for me to say."

on Hollywood
"I won't buy into the Hollywood thing...I want to be in good movies."

on nudity in films
"I'm doing my bit for the women's movement. The women have always been naked in movies and now I'm just desperate to take my clothes off as much as possible."
"It's a great feeling of power to be naked in front of people. We're happy to watch actual incredible graphic violence and gore, but as soon as somebody's naked it seems like the public goes a bit bananas about the whole thing."

on Big Fish
"There were lots of scary moments in it. There was a whole sequence with me in a circus...with a lion...The lion tamer said, 'you'll be fine as long as you don't annoy it'..and to make the lion roar she gently taps it on the head with a stick..she's annoying the lion and I'm the first thing it can see."

on Star Wars
"Actually, I really want to play Princess Leia. Stick some big pastries on my head. Now, that would be interesting."
"I've been waiting nearly twenty years to have my own light saber. Nothing's cooler than being a Jedi Knight."
"Then I watched the first episode of Star Wars over and over again. I loved it as a kid. It was a bit funny to be paid for it. I'd say to my wife, "I've got to go and watch Star Wars again, Sorry. I just haven't quite got it..." Brilliant."
"Doing the second one was interesting, because I'd never had to go back to play a character again. It was three years between the two episodes. It was a bit easier because I was more used to the technical demands. In other films you rehearse, crack the scene and shoot it. In Star Wars, that's not the case. It's a very different process with an enormous amount of blue-screen work. It's very difficult - you play scenes with people who aren't there."
"Acting to mid-air is odd. There's a perverse pleasure to it when you get it right, but often you don't. Aliens are really hard. On the second one [Star Wars: Episode II] I was doing the scene with those tall ones - actually, I quite fancied the female one - and they've got actors there who will actually be providing the voices for the characters. They wore blue hard hats with cardboard cut-outs of heads taped on top of them. So you've got to remember not to talk to the people but to talk to the hats."
"I love talking to kids about it, because they have great questions about how things work: "Do you have your lightsabre with you?""
"That was my challenge - to be a young Alec Guinness. People would come up and say to me, "You sound a bit like Alec Guinness. Did that just happen?" No! It's my job, you know? The thrilling bit about it was I immersed myself in Alec Guinness movies, and I found this great one called The Card. God, it's a brilliant film."

on Star Wars when an interviewer reminded him of his "aversion" to major films
"I know what I said, but, hey! This is Star Wars!"

on his round-the-world motorcycle trip
"Some nights we would pitch a tent and feel there wasn't another person within 1000 miles."

on becoming UNICEF ambassador
"I vowed then and there [after his frequent visits to various UNICEF projects during his round-the-world motorcycle trip] to devote time and effort to do as much as I could for Unicef once I returned home."
"I am so honoured to have been given this opportunity to become an ambassador. It's a new and different venture for me and one that I know will widen my perspective on life. I'm in a position to use the recognition from my work to do something really positive for children."