""I could do with more mobbing, Particularly from women. I'd like to be treated like Ricky Martin".

"I just don't believe in love at first sight any more, even though I've based my whole career on the concept. In my experience, power, money and influence always attract the opposite sex. It's something that I've always exploited - with good results."

"Basically, my life is so boring, it's embarrassing."

"I do, kind of, want to ram their microphones down their patronising throats" - on being called posh by the media

"I don't particularly like babies. I don't mind them for about four minutes. That's my max. After that I can't quite see what everyone's fussing about."

"I watch an awful lot of women's sport recently. I don't know what that means about me. I watch the women's golf. I watch the women's tennis very much."

"I've got four houses in my street. I live in two and the others are empty. I'll buy more as they come up, because I think it would be great to have the entire street."

"Women are frightening. If you get to 41 as a man, you're quite battle-scarred."

[on his thoughts of actress Julia Roberts] "Very big-mouthed! Literally, physically, she has a very big mouth. It is a very big mouth. When I was kissing her I was aware of a faint echo."

"it was the same approach as the first one, which was just to make sure that it was as crap as we wanted it to be. The key is to stop the stunt coordinator from coming in to make it look like a film fight. We just wanted it to be two pathetic Englishmen scared of each other, throwing their handbags at each other basically." [on his screen fight with Colin Firth in 'Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason']

"I think film acting's just a miserable experience. It's so long and so boring and so difficult to get right so that what you need above all is incredible willpower and strength of mind."

"Now, I quite like it. For years I sat in these interviews and everyone said, "You're always Mister Nice Guy, why don't you ever play someone nasty?" So in fact it's been a relief to be...for the real me to come out more on camera. I don't have any particular burning desire to go back to being cuddly. Not really. " [on playing the bad guy in films]