My dad's a very sensitive man, but as the archetypal rebellious teenager, I didn't realise that.
I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.
I have played characters where I haven't been absorbed - you know, what I call a typical film leading man role where you just have to look gorgeous and be attractive and charming. It bores me. I like a bit of dirt, a bit of sand in the oyster.
Sister Monica Joan murmured, as though to herself, but loud enough to be heard by all, "How perfectly charming. Old enough to know it all, and young enough to blush. Perfectly charming.
That was not part of the U.N. resolution; it was not part of the mandate to go on to Baghdad and, frankly, if we had gone into Baghdad and pushed Saddam Hussein off, we would have inherited an even bigger mess than the mess we inherited with the refugee problem.
I have inherited pace from my dad, and in terms of the physical side with the balance, I have inherited that from my mum.
A small room is enough; a small quantity of food is enough; a few clothes are enough; one lover, a very ordinary man
I'm a bit taller too because I've got Mum's legs and Dad was a bit more squat and well-built than me. My brother Andrew is a bit more like Dad.
People say I inherited my feisty attitude on the cricket pitch from my dad, but he and I might disagree. The most useful trait I've inherited from my mother is to make sure that I'm always organised.
I think my dad has a similar black sense of humour to mine, so perhaps it's just an inherited thing. I've got two little boys now, and I can see it with them as well. I don't know if you learn it off your parents - but my dad used to take me to see certain plays when I was quite young, so maybe that had an effect as well.
You know, you learned that very young in American culture that the feminine boys don't do well. And yet, I had a dad who was a lieutenant colonel in the army. My dad was a man's man, but he still adored me. And somehow in the midst of that, I still grew up hating the sissy in me.
Since I was a kid, I inherited my dad's love for animals and wildlife, even for the ones we had around the house in the French countryside, a 'smaller' kind of nature. Then, as I grew up, I looked more deeply into the African continent and its wildlife.
I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.
If I played badly as a kid, my dad would tell me, and my mum would say, 'You were brilliant today'. It's nice to have both: when I need a bit of confidence, I'll see her, and if I need to hear it straight, I'll see my dad.
I would have loved to have had a gay dad. At school, there were always kids saying 'my dad is bigger than your dad, my dad will batter your dad!' So what? My dad will shag your dad..and your dad will enjoy it.
When I look at American history and I look at what history means to me, I look at it as if it were a string of stories. And if it's told well enough and in a way that's charming and warm and with wit and humor, then it takes a bit of the edge off of it. You can still tell the truth, but if you tell it very sweetly and very warmly, it makes it go down a bit easier.