Rachel Weisz

I think London’s sexy because it’s so full of eccentrics.

I’m a bit superstitious about certain things, like what shoes to wear. If I wear the wrong shoes, the whole day may go wrong. Or if I don’t get to the bottom of the stairs before the door closes – stupid little things like that. Then I also have all the normal ones, like don’t walking under ladders and so on.

I moved to New York last year and I love it. It’s a huge change and I’ve always wanted to spend time there. It’s like a more intense London, and everything’s up a few notches. The lights are brighter, the pace is faster and the food’s better.

As Ralph’s character begins to discover the political thriller aspect of the film, he falls deeper in love with his wife, so the two run together. That’s the beauty of this film. It has fast pace and excitement, but it also has heart and soul.

Oh God, don’t make me come across as a moaner. I think it’s unacceptable to moan about anything when you’re lucky enough to do what I do. What I’m trying to say is I’m more settled now. The thirties have calmed me down. I know who my real friends are, I know what I want to do. In your twenties, you just do everything. It’s just overload all the time. In the thirties, you learn that it’s OK to go to bed early if you want.

There’s a lot of contemporary actresses I admire, but there’s practically no one who’s made a color movie whose career I’d want … I don’t feel very modern at all.

Whenever I have bid a hasty goodbye to a loved one, I’ve always made sure that my record collection was safely stored away in the boot of the car….Sometimes the parting was so fast, I was not able to get them into alphabetical order, but I still got away with my records, that was essential.

If you really want something, you’ve gotta just do it and not wait for other people to hand it to you.

At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.

I think an extreme thing; I adjust it, I adjust it, I adjust it. That’s the way I get to it, but I have to push to, you know, the furthest concept possible.

I’m the closest that hip-hop is getting to God. In some situations I’m like a ghetto Pope.

You gotta wear the right trousers if you’re gonna be a rock star.

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.

I think for women especially, you need to have a plan. I need to have some other ways to generate income, so I don’t have to stretch my face or lift the top of my head with surgery or something.

I’d say I’m a bit of a fatalist but not as much as I was. I used to be like “whatever happens happens” and have that innate fatalistic outlook. But I think it’s more about what you are thinking in your own mind that is the most powerful aspect of controlling your own life.

Nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet.

Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts – only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people will tend to be satisfied by what you do.

People say you can’t please everyone all the time. I don’t believe that. I think you can. I’m not like, ‘Oh I’m Kanye West.’ I’m like, ‘Oh you don’t like it? Oh wow!’ To the point where I know you have to like it.

I can’t believe you recently had a baby. How do you do it? [pause] The baby starts to come down…and once that happens you can’t-it comes out. Whether you let it or not, the baby comes out. So that’s how I did it.

In an interview, Paris Hilton said that of her and her sister, ‘People love to hate us. But when you know us, you love us. And if you really get to know us, you get gonorrhea’.

Maybe it’s because I’m English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it.