Chris Martin

A band’s only unique thing is its chemistry, especially if none of you are prodigious players or particularly handsome. The one thing you have is your uniqueness, so we hold on to that.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you’re singing it from someone else’s angle. But it’s always from me. It’s just a new way of framing it.

Looking after your ears is unfortunately something you don’t think about until there’s a problem.

You can never say you’re big – I don’t think you can ever take anything like that for granted.

Record sales don’t really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn’t feel like he wasted his pocket money.

It’s more egalitarian on the Internet – anyone can put anything up. But in terms of the money it takes to allow a band to get good, there’s less of it to invest.

We’ve been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, ‘Do you think it’s having any effect?’ I can’t answer that. It’s like asking me in the Cavern, ‘Are you gonna make it?’ In the back of my mind I thought, I’m gonna make it, but I couldn’t lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.

In the middle of everything that I’ve done as a singer or as somebody who’s jumped on top of a few old books and turned ‘em into songs about hobbits f*cking vikings, I think I’ve danced a beautiful dance through it all, without becoming too much of a cliche. I’ve enjoyed the two-step. It’s brought me great gifts.

At the end of the day, I just do my job. I love my art. But I genuinely want to change the world. I’m very generous, and I really want people to see that I am – that’s really it.

[On how she handles people who disagree with her] I’ve learned the art of ignoring people. When people give you some piece of direction you don’t like, you just nod and ignore it. Just don’t do it! Most people want to be heard and acknowledged, anyway. Just do what you want to do.

[whether he thought he was a sexy man-beast] I wouldn’t be able to say. I don’t think I’m much of one. It’s funny, it is the secret to any guy – if people find him unattractive or whatever you just get Stephenie Meyer to tell the world, to put on her Web site that this guy is now attractive and everybody changes their minds.

For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.

As strange as movie making is, doing love scenes for the first time with someone you’ve never even said hello to does work in terms of having a fresh quality to a relationship

Acting is really about showing up that day and telling the writers what you feel like saying.

There are always generic terms like ‘Americana’, but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

Keep in mind that most men like to pursue and win you. Don’t rob him of the enjoyment of doing that. When it comes to dressing to go out, it’s been my experience that guys prefer to think that the object of their affection is someone exclusive who isn’t available to everyone in the room. You’re clever enough to strike the right balance between hot and classy, aren’t you? Turn up the heat, but don’t invite the whole fire department.

And now that you have a child you have to clean up your act, ’cause you can’t drink anymore. You can’t come home drunk and go, ‘Hey, here’s a little switch: Daddy’s gonna throw up on you!’

I am slightly disheveled, I think. I’m really pleased that I am, because otherwise I could be in a really, really dull and boring place now, as a musician at least.

My passion is doing movies, and as long as I keep doing that, I’ll be happy. I want to do movies, fun roles and dramatic ones. I love all of it.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.

Photoshop is just like makeup. When it’s done well it looks great, and when it’s overdone you look like a crazy asshole.