Rachel Weisz

You know what, I have faith in people. I think people want to see something new and different. They don’t want to see anything that they’ve seen before. They don’t want to have it worked out in the first 10 minutes how it will end. I think people are really smart and sophisticated.

I’ve never felt uncomfortable with my level of fame. I don’t get hassled. Maybe sometimes in a minor way, but New Yorkers are much too cool for that. The thing is, you choose to be an actress, but not to be a celebrity.

[on shopping] God no! I hate it, absolutely hate it. I can’t stand it, it’s such a drag. So I just tend to wear the same things all the time. I don’t like change anyway.

I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.

In reality, the main thing that keeps me awake at night is probably the destruction of the planet; that’s what gets me pretty upset.

I prefer being as far from the centre of celebrity as possible.

I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous. We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids. And it’s not like people are really anonymous anyway — you remember that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm? In the end, everybody knows who ‘anonymous’ is.

Everyone’s got their own reason. Some believe it’s because I spent some of my childhood in the far north that I helped Chukotka, some believe it’s because I had a difficult childhood that I helped Chukotka, some believe it’s because I stole money that I helped Chukotka. None of these is real. When you come out and you see a situation and there are 50,000 people, you want to do something. I haven’t seen anything worse than what I saw there in my life.

But charity is a very complicated thing. It’s important to find an area where you can really help and you can feel the results. Charity is not like feeding pigeons in the square. It is a process that requires professional management.