A slowly moving queue does not move uniformly. Rather, waves of motion pass down the queue. The frequency and amplitude of these waves is inversely related to the speed at which the queue is served.
When the Hollywood thing happened, I thought at some point I'd get to the front of the queue: 'Yes, hello, I'd like to play that role.' But you don't. You just join a different queue.
I have about two manicures a year, maybe three haircuts. I used to get blowdries all the time, and I never did my own hair. Now I'm last in the queue - the focus is on my home.
The queue and the fan are, of course, closely related in that fans will queue any length of time in any weather to see, touch, watch, hear, read, wear, or simply enjoy proximity to the object of their devotion.
I'm privileged to have had some success, but I've never forgotten what it was like to queue for a half-crown gallery seat for 'Oliver!' which is why I ensure that there are £20 day tickets for 'Miss Saigon' and that the balconies in my theatres are as comfortable as I can possibly make them.
[about suicide] And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queuejumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, “Excuse me, I was here first.” They don't say, “You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.” That would be a bit strong.
I say to my colleagues that I sit alongside them in committee, in the bars and in the tea room, and I queue alongside them in the division lobby. But when it comes to marriage, they are asking me to stand apart and to join a separate queue. I ask my colleagues, if I am equal in this house, to give me every opportunity to be equal.
In the 84 days after Beijing I had, on average, three things a day and one day off. I didn't sleep in the same bed for more than two nights in a row. It sounds a bit pathetic but it was exhausting - it was like really intensive training with no rest days.
I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.
How in heck are they handling their surplus population in Hell these days? Maybe by the time you and I are in the queue there won't be room for us.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
I was on a tour of a Restoration comedy in 1996, and in Moscow we stayed at the Metropole hotel, off Red Square. The food there was opulent, but in the Maly theatre canteen, there were just a few pieces of rye bread, peanuts, and gherkins. I stood in the queue and burst into tears.
I used to go to the same club every week in my home town, and even there I'd always stay at the back of the queue. I never once assumed I could just walk in.
One day when I was working on a movie, I stayed at the beach a little too long, and they said, “You are going to ruin a whole day of shooting because you’re so dark. Two days ago you weren’t like this!” So I started putting that in the character; I made him suntanned all the time.
Of the secular mysteries to which I wake with fresh and sometimes angry amazement every day, the queue is the second-most baffling. The first is the fan.
If, as an actor, you allow yourself to be cocooned from the boring pin-pricks of day-to-day existence - like standing in a queue at the butcher's or any of the other dreary little events that we all have in our daily lives - you begin to lose your lifeline to what people are. And if you lose that, you eventually lose the ability to act.