Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but once you do it it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug.

I hope to get out before they start football next year.

As a young actor people were trying to define who I was before I really knew that for myself. But I still remember thinking 'This is what I love doing and I hope I'm going to be able to do it forever.'

I love the Beatles. I haven't named any kids after them but I still really love them. They were the first group that I was ever properly aware of. In my early teens I would sometimes stay in and listen to the radio all day in the hope that I would catch a song by them that I'd never heard before and be able to tape it on my radio-cassette player.

I do sometimes strongly hope that in a past life my most recent life before this I was absolutely horrible evil hideous. Because otherwise - well hell to even things up next time around I'm going to have to pay for this one am I not?

In between films I like to travel and hope to visit every continent before I become a mother.

Before you give up hope turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

I hope I die before I get old.

Theater is of course a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

The secret is not to give up hope. It's very hard not to because if you're really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.

Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.

However I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home it starts with the parental influence.

Before I had kids I'd go out on the road for months and months at a time but now I don't think I'd want to do that anymore because I'd miss too much time at home so it's just a matter of monitoring how much work that I do and how much time I'm on the road.

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33 000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.