is that it is like Hamlet. If you thought about who had played it before, you'd never play Hamlet again.

I enjoy playing Mr. Darcy, but I'm not hungry to play Mark Darcy again.

And I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

If you play a role, you want to familiarize yourself with that person's world. If I were playing an airline pilot or a doctor, I'd probably want to hang out with a doctor or an airplane pilot for a while, ask some questions. You don't get to hang out the kings. They don't help consult on movies. So your resources are, by necessity, secondary.

I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics.

Something like 'A Single Man,' it was tiny; it was financed by one guy. We all lost money doing it.