I remember Michael saying 'Rich and famous? It's much better to be just rich'. I didn't quite get it to begin with. But he's right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you've no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.

It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve and the Germans French and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer in German which I never have so I am really excited about that.

I hear the way people talk about the children of famous people. They're not treated very well. The presumptions are usually quite awful. So I tried to establish myself with a couple of movies. After 'Juno' I thought: 'I think I've defined myself enough as my own director that I'd love to work with my father.'

The love of the famous like all strong passions is quite abstract. Its intensity can be measured mathematically and it is independent of persons.

I for one am quite willing to join the 'forgive forget and move on' crowd but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.

Even if you plan a marriage and a family you are never quite prepared for the reality versus how you imagined it. In a lot of ways it's better and in a lot of ways it's worse. That's life right?

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine Oscar Moore died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.

I think my father would have liked to have been an artist actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or I don't know I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner everyone knows everyone and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.

I never did quite fit the glamour mode. It is life with my husband and family that is my high now.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

As might be supposed my parents were quite poor but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life as indeed over anything.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing but never - pleasurable.

I don't have a fear factor. Well not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

And so I think that if the person has the funds the network and the equipment to do this and also the experience which is the key factor then they can be quite deadly.

And actually about three weeks ago Micky Peter and I were in Vegas at the MGM Grand. And we did about 12 shows in seven days. It was quite an experience.

My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

Although we have in theory abolished human slavery recognized women's rights and stopped child labor we continue to enslave other species who if we simply pay attention show quite clearly that they experience parental love pain and the desire for freedom just as we do.

It's been quite an experience being conservative and living in the North East.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6 but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

Yes I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening and not reading quite fascinating.

As with real reading the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary.

I had one relative who passed away but fortunately none others. So my sort of experience of it is quite limited thankfully.