I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life – from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.
When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.
It’s easy to forget, given her scandal-tinged life and tragic death, how incredibly talented Whitney Houston was. She holds the world record as the most-awarded female act of all time, with over 415 major recognitions during her career. She is the only artist to chart seven consecutive number one songs.
New York City life is different from all other city life. It’s incredibly relentless and fast, and I think when I first got here, it was incredibly exciting. It was also so hot. I didn’t know New York got so hot. I’m not a fan of the heat!
In Hollywood, you can live alongside very famous but still incredibly boring people. I’ve never wanted to be immortal. Even if nobody remembers me after my death, it’s still okay with me.
To have the kind of success I have had is really amazing, and I am incredibly grateful.
I am actually incredibly contented and jolly. But, and I have no idea why this is, I have a really strong empathy with all kinds of warped and destructive modes of thinking. I don’t know why, but those things co-exist.
Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn’t seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it.
I was incredibly fatalistic. I just thought, ‘If it works, it works.’ But I’ve always been like that. I’ve never been easily impressed, and I’ve never thought I didn’t deserve something. If I got it, then I deserved it.
Some films clearly seem to divide people. And I do think there’s something incredibly exciting about the commonality of us as human beings, which some films are lucky enough to tap into.
I’m very conscious that I’m in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it – how incredibly lucky.
It all felt like a terribly long time. It would have meant that I had to make five movies in five years and if you don’t like the movies, too bad. I guess I just wanted my freedom, and I think my life has been incredibly enhanced as a result.
Being a writer-director can sometimes make you incredibly blinkered.
I just find all that stuff incredibly funny. I love a fart. I’d do anything for a good poo story.
It’s hard to learn an American accent. Some of the Rs at the ends of words are incredibly hard.
When a PR person asks why is it a big deal that they got your name wrong or sent you a pitch on something you would never cover, it’s because when you get hundreds of those a day, it’s incredibly annoying. It’s basically like having telemarketers call you all day long for something you never want to buy.
I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.
I’m an incredibly negative person, so any form of success is only ever going to be a relief to me and set my default position back to neutral.
Japanese horror films take the business of being frightening seriously. There is no attempt at postmodernism or humour. They are incredibly melancholy, with a strong emotional core, while remaining absolutely terrifying.
I have had the auditioning process go on for two weeks or three weeks. I am always incredibly anxious. The audition and the wait is definitely the hardest part for me.
I have a great relationship with my kids. We’re very honest with each other, and I’m very proud that we are absolutely, incredibly close. That to me is more important than anything.
At 13, in my first year of Tonbridge, I went up for the part of Macbeth. I was up against the 17- and 18-year-olds, but for some reason I got the part. It made me incredibly unpopular with my peers, but it was the English and drama teachers who stepped in to save me when others wanted me kicked out of the school.
I love playing strong feisty women, I really do, but if you were to ask my husband he’d probably say that I’m very insecure. And actually incredibly malleable, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Having an affair with an intern is just an incredibly stupid thing to do.
I love New York. I was sad, depressed and incredibly moved by our fellow countrymen and what they’ve done. I wanted to give people a chance to see something funny, have a distraction.
And to be honest, most actors are incredibly solipsistic.
The second series of ‘Fonejacker’ almost killed me. It was incredibly intense.
Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.
I wish that the adults who are ‘in power’ cared more about what their children read. Books are incredibly powerful when we are young – the books I read as a child have stayed with me my entire life – and yet, the people who write about books, for the most part, completely ignore children’s literature.
Crows are incredibly smart. They can be taught five things on the drop.
Grief is never something you get over. You don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I’ve conquered that; now I’m moving on.’ It’s something that walks beside you every day. And if you can learn how to manage it and honour the person that you miss, you can take something that is incredibly sad and have some form of positivity.
You’d see little shallow graves, lined up, one after the other – babies. That’s what happens when measles goes through a nutritionally deficient community. It’s a horrible disease, and it spreads incredibly efficiently.
That transition from child to adult actor is so incredibly elusive. The roles that were coming to me as a young adult were not that great, but I was taking them anyway to pay the rent. And the more bad roles in bad movies I took, the less anybody wanted me for a good role in a good movie.
We want to get this good music to as many people as possible because I think it heals, it soothes, I think music is incredibly important, especially in today’s chaos.
Kids have been a great clarifier – incredibly rewarding.
The best voice actors all have a live performance background. And are competent, fearless, incredibly creative actors.
I’m not sure how healthy bacon is in general, but I know it’s incredibly delicious.
We’ve been given this great gift, this huge canvas of these beautiful books by George Martin, and the idea of telling this whole epic through to the end is incredibly compelling.
My family life is incredibly important to me. I want to be with them as much as I can. I try to work in New York, or I work in the summer time when my family can come with me.
I like people who do what they do incredibly well and are active in their non-acting life, too.
I have to tell you, TV is an incredibly difficult medium. The most challenging show to do is the hour long dramedy. It’s a very tricky format.
I’m just incredibly interested in people.
A lot of things went incredibly well for ‘Scrubs’: from a ridiculous number of downloads on the iPods, to whenever they issue a new season on DVD it kinda sells out, and we got nominated for an Emmy. To be picked up for six years is all gravy, man.
Morocco is such a beautiful place. It’s incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact. I mean, when I write something in the press, the day after in the fish market, people will be discussing it.
I’ve seen that phenomenally successful people believe they can learn something from everybody. I call them ‘mavericks with mentors.’ Richard Branson, for instance, is a total maverick but he surrounds himself with incredibly successful, smart people and he listens to them.
Anytime I get the chance to sing or work with Michael John, it is such an incredibly fertile and incredibly creative and safe and encouraging environment – and challenging, too, because he is so collaborative!
When you have too many people and you’re trying to satisfy everybody’s input, you usually end up with something so incredibly generic that it has no point of view.
Be incredibly, ruthlessly selfish with your equity.
I’m a workaholic. Before long I’m traveling on my nervous energy alone. This is incredibly exhausting.
I know people who are incredibly successful who still dress the way they did when they were 18, just because they still think that’s how they look good.
I do most of my work with kids. They are the very foundation of our future. We are so incredibly disrespectful to them in America in every way because they can’t vote.
No one will ever argue that someone could have played Helen Keller better than Patty Duke. It was an incredibly demanding role and I don’t think anyone can argue that it was a false performance.
I look at my grandparents and what they dealt with in the Japanese internment in Arizona. That sense of perseverance, of making the best out of an incredibly bad situation, has always been something I drew inspiration from. I always ask myself, ‘What in the world do I have to complain about?’
