Having been on a private jet only two or three times, it's one of life's great luxuries.

I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.

I grew up in London, one of four children. We were a very loud family, not a lot of listening, plenty of talking. My mum was a hearth mother: she loved to gather us all around her - Sunday lunches were a big thing. She was very good at thinking on her feet - people used to say she should go into politics.

I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.

I'm not very good at strategizing.

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

You have to go where the good writing is.

You just have to take control of your own performance.

Quiet people, people who aren't given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - they're also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.

I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.

You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night.

I'm one of those pesky Brits.

I've always been a narcissist.

A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.

I don't mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.

I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.

I'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.

I'm always forming bands.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.

Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.

Why do you think so many actors are only half-developed people? It's very easy when you're a young actor to have these intense, explosive friendships for short periods of time, because you can control what's shown of you. Then you go on to your next job and reinvent yourself again. I think it's important to find something constant.

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.

L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

My parents were incredibly inclusive.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

The lesson I learned is that sometimes the task you have at hand needs all of your concentration and focus.

My heroes were all in the theatre.

I'm no more or less antisocial than the next person.

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.

People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

I'm a slow starter.

I love playing sport.

I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.

What I do believe in is the moral code of Christianity.

When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?'

It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.

In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.

I'd feel guilty just doing gags.

You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.

Producing is a world of compromise and actors are utterly spoiled all the time.