Happy Birthday Alexander Siddig!

There was a point where I was just going to call myself "uh" because people would walk up to me in the street and say "Hey you're, uh..." That would just make it a lot easier for them. And I could just say "Yes, I am!"

There's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles.

That was possibly the lamest movie I've ever been in. I mean, you know, there's some times when you do duds, and I must've been rubbish, because I think there was all of one minute more of performance that I may have done that didn't end up in the movie. So 50% of my performance was cut and...yeah, there's not much you can say about that.

When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history. 

The only thing I remember about that was the first day. The first A.D. came into the trailer where we were all having our makeup and shit done, and he was, like "Guys, I need your attention, please." And we were, like "Yeah?" And he said, "Um, Mr. McConaughey's gonna arrive on set in about 15 minutes, and I have to give you a directive - which comes from the producers - that you are not to call him 'Matthew' or 'Mr. McConaughey' or anything to do with his real life. You must call him Van Zan." Van Zan was his character name. "And even if you meet him outside in the road, even if you meet him out in town in Dublin," where we were shooting this movie, "You must call him Van Zan." And that is exactly what I remember about that movie, because as that first A.D. left the building, I shouted - rather lamely - "And he's got to call me Elvis!" But he didn't call me Elvis. In fact, he didn't call me anything!

I think if you're good and you can persuade people you're going to be able to do that role and ultimately the audience buys it, then it doesn't matter whether you were really a chimpanzee in disguise! You've done it.

Something most people don't know about me is that I never grew up.

For me, it's painful to make a movie. It's not my normal rhythm. 

I wish everybody was just ethnically ambiguous. It would make life a lot easier.

I blame Ridley Scott really, because he was the person who went "I love Star Trek and I'd love it if you were in my movie" and people like Oliver Stone went "I hated Star Trek and I don't want you in Alexander. I was really lucky there.

The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation.

I aspire to be a director...I think it stems from wanting to be a conductor, another desire of mine from my childhood, though I was not interested in music, not at all. I just wanted to control that orchestra.

I love sci-fi, computer games. I love any escapes. Give me them all. 

We're a pretty passionate lot, but we're also incredibly zipped up. We're very sort of guarded, especially in public, and dignity and sense of honour and duty are terribly important.

You know, I find people with great honesty, bodily, physical honesty, who sit just the way they like to sit, and walk the way they like to walk, and don't come into a room all pumped up, I find them elegant.

I was in a situation where I pretty much had a theater company at my disposal and a theater at my disposal and could do anything I liked...as long as I did it for nothing. Which is sort of a step before charging and not being able to do what you like. I was at a point where I could have just gone on and become a director in London, as a trainee at the Royal Shakespeare Company or something like that, and ended up being a bona fide director. It was quite a big struggle because for a year and a half, which is the time I spent directing immediately after I left acting school, you just have no money so you're just living on welfare and you're trying to make it.

I'm kind of stupid.

It was a real treasure, a treat, to find a character, a role, that wasn't intent on trying to blow up the White House or hijack an airplane.