I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

People are fascinated by evil because its mysterious and it doesnt seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

When you see natural disasters caught on film you realize how well they had been imagined by Hollywood for such a long time. It's all good fun. You never know who's gonna survive and who doesn't.

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

People are fascinated by evil because it's mysterious and it doesn't seem to have a rational behind it.

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.

You can't really do a lot of research for being a mass manipulating, murdering super-villain.

Very few movies I've done I regret being involved in.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really.

I've done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though - come on, it's brilliant. I love a good death scene!

I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

Matt Weiner is an amazing writer. He's one of the best, greatest writers that's ever written for television, or just written.

I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they're having a shower. It's fun.

If you want to do your version, go off and write it. You bring your knowledge to it, and you can use that to shape it and color it, but it's someone else's version of that character. You're not actually playing the real person.