Robbie Williams

I still find trusting people quite hard. I’ve got a couple of mates that I do let in, but that’s it. It’s something I’ve got to sort out-I cut people off.

As a 29-year-old, the only thing that I can possibly think is that if I’m still performing at 50, it’s because I’ll have had disastrous marriages and I have to pay for them.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe write some really great stuff – stuff that would put Oscar Wilde to shame. If the Pet Shop Boys ever wanted a third member, I’d be there.

It’s a huge responsibility being a solo act.

To be honest, I don’t want No. 1’s anymore. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind the odd few, but I’d also like a record going in at eight and staying around.

Inside me there is a fat man dying to get out.

We all know what it feels like to be an outcast or a loner or to fall between the cracks. To be the target of gossip or people talking about you, or girls are ganging up on you. One minute, they’re your best friend; the next, they call you on three-way.

[on Darren Aronofsky] I guess the first impression was that I’d been a big admirer of his work, and then I met someone who you’d never have put with that work. There was something very refreshing about that. I thought I was going to meet someone who was very intense and weird.

I absolutely adore and idolize women. All women. I think they are all amazing. The female musicians I’ve met have been far more inspiring than the male ones. Women tend to be much more creative and ambitious. I think I may have been a woman in a past life.

My grandfather was a farmer so I was always raised that you worked very hard whatever your job is; my sister was a teacher. You’re to be respected if you try hard and try to be good at something and the results are less important. You can’t control that. The more important thing is that you tried your best. But now there’s much more of an intention where some of these kids don’t want to be actors, they want to be famous! Their focus isn’t necessarily on craftsmanship.

If I didn’t do what I do, I wouldn’t be as young as I am.

Down the road, I’ll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.

It’s always great to make a film about people that don’t get along, because you inevitably wind up getting along so well.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

If I say a rap and I laugh, that means it’s a winner.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it’s terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It’s a dying art, in a way.

I’m a restless guy who’s happy to be restless. I find that I’m always inquiring and I’m always in the middle of new situations. It’s just life experience, I guess. But I’ve been around quite a while.

[on her parents] They’re very harsh critics and they’ve often said to me: “That was shit, you were crap’, but this is the first time (after he saw her as “Amy Foster” on Swept from the Sea) my father said to me: ‘I think one day you’ll be a good actress”!

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.

There have been people I’ve warmed to over the years but, as the situation I’m in is so fleeting and transient, I’ve always known it’s going to be over kind of real quick.

What turning forty means to me- I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that, but now I do.