Rachel Weisz

I find Hollywood really toxic.

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.

I’ve always been fascinated by activists, people who will devote their life to a cause, people who go to India and to Africa and put their life in jeopardy to do what they believe is right.

If it’s bad dialogue then I would think of nothing worse than the camera lingering on me and the person I’m talking to for fifteen minutes.

I’m not one for parties and stuff like that. I get a bit nervous around lots of people. Being invisible is what I really enjoy. That I find quite entertaining.

I don’t want to wear high heels because I can’t run around with my son. So, for real life, I like to be in jeans and nice-cut shirts. I appreciate good tailoring.

Growing up is not being so dead-set on making everybody happy.

Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don’t know who that’s attributed to. I think it’s Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.

I never dreamed I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, mostly because my style is so typically Austrian.

I did Jonathon Ross last year and he said ‘do people do impressions of David Brent?’ and I went ‘well, they can’t really because he’s such a normal bloke’. Then, after the show, me and Ross are walking through the car park and this bloke jumps out and goes ‘der-ner-ner-ner-ner’, does the David Brent dance and runs away. Jonathon Ross was in hysterics: ‘all that shit you came out with and then some bloke jumps out and runs away’. But on the whole it doesn’t really happen.

[on High School Musical] It’s hard to find people you are very close to and can relate to, but with this movie we really did bond. I felt very blessed for that.

My father’s name is Vernon, and my mother liked the initials double V, so she named my sisters Victoria and Valerie. That’s cool- except when the dogs start getting V names.

I don’t think Disney gets enough credit as a director. When people talk about their favourite directors of all time, Disney has some dope movies under his belt too.

I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.

In the morning, I can not be without looking at my phone to see the IM’s or any missed calls that I missed and Food!

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

The fact that I am a young woman who doesn’t need a man for money. I don’t need a man for a job. I’ve never had to f**k for beats. I’ve never had to f**k for a record deal. I don’t have those pressures. I get up when I want, shop when I want.

I closed my eyes, held my breath and then everything went black.

I don’t speak particularly well. That’s one of the consequences of being extremely ugly.