When I was a kid, I wanted to be serious, like Daniel Day-Lewis. No one really dreams of being a comic actor, do they? Now I realise how stupid that is - and it's because comic acting isn't taken seriously enough. It's a discipline. You know instantly - either you're funny and getting the laughs, or you're not.

I think there's something in the fact that it's hard to be good looking and funny. You have to have an oddball quality people have to sympathise with you to find you funny.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings - by classmates, not the nuns - was to be the funny guy.

It's sort of an action flick. You can't be that funny trying to steal diamonds.