I was bullied a lot... doing anything overly well was punished by the kids.

I wasn't interested in football. It made me different. I wore glasses, had bad hair, a funny name, you name it.

I believe in allowing an audience the opportunity to make up their own mind.

Intrigue is so much more effective. I don't like to be over-prescriptive of an audience. The same with a book or with art - people shouldn't read too much before they explore.

It's all very brilliant to build bridges and buildings, but long after we're gone, it will be the natural things in this world which will still be here.

If I make a film about now, the minute it was done, it wouldn't be about now; it'd be about then.

The most contemporary film I can think of is your standard romantic comedy, but the minute you make them, they already look so aged.

Some are in it for the money, which is fine. Some of them are in it to be a movie star; that's another reason. Some actors - and this I never understand - will only play likeable characters. And if they're not likeable, they change them to be heroic.

I guess the reason I wanted to be an actor was that it felt like it would offer something different all the time.

'We' is a difficult word for me. I don't know if I feel 'we' about anything.

I got the 'I don't want the normal job' bug. At home, we have countless career advisors who would tell us to work in department stores and stay below the bar and not overreach our grasp. I didn't believe any of them.

I find dipping one's toe into all of these people's lives is one of the major exciting points of being an actor. This dilettantism.

I love learning things, whether it's a language or Philippine knife-fighting or the Viennese waltz.

I have to be absolutely drawn to the project. If you're ashamed or bored by it at the beginning, it's going to be a pretty nightmarish thing.

I've never got on with recipes. Free yourself - throw them out!

I don't do glamorous things.

I really enjoy the fact that the very boring, normal person that I am isn't kind of interesting to anyone. It's fine by me.

I've never been to war, and I would never presume to fully understand the horrors that that kind of experience can impart.

I'm a big fan of imagination. I think it's the strongest tool we have, and there are some things that you just can't practice.

I never want to overstay my welcome for any character. I would rather people are excited by the ideas a character generates in them rather than feeling bored and wishing he would just go away.

Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around.

One of the things I noticed in my career that gave me a lot of happiness early on was realising we don't have any control.

I'm studying Krav Maga, which is an Israeli form of self defense. It's very deadly and without rules.

I'm a bit of a technophobe.

Sport is not my thing.

What theatre people love about theatre - and I totally understand it, I just don't share it - is that they feel they mint something afresh every night. Because I would rather do something until I've done it and then know it's done. New day, next thing!

I think saying you're bad at something is rather wonderful because then it doesn't matter anymore.

I'm a terrible dancer.

When I come home, all I do is cook. I love cooking, so I go to markets, buy food, cook it for friends. I love doing that.

The one thing I couldn't imagine is stopping still.

There are some great actors I don't want to meet because I don't want to know how they did it. I don't want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy.

All I would say is that when I've been very down or having kind of a tough time in my life, certain films or pieces of music or books have changed that. They've taken me out of a dark place and put me into a more positive one. And I think that if we can do that for people, then it's certainly worth doing.

I find the English flag - the cross - quite frightening; it has very bad symbolism for me. Not just football hooligans but supremacists and the BNP.

The Blue Ridge Mountains are an incredible place.

I was asked by this British band called Kairos 4Tet to write lyrics for them. And I wrote lyrics for them. The album is called 'Everything We Hold,' and you can hear my lyrics.

I'll tell you, there's no goodies and baddies in the world, there's just people with intentions that sometimes clash.

Becoming that guy who does one thing is not very interesting. I'm lucky and proud to have been involved in period films and action films.

Everybody has many people inside of them. I think we tend to present the one we feel is most appropriate at first in order to gain acceptance or achieve what we want.

I've been a big blagger all my life.

Growing up in England, you're sort of spoiled, in a way. You sort of take it for granted that within a half-hour's drive, you could be walking around a stately home from the 1700s. It's not very hard to do - in California, you've got to take a flight!

I went to a drama club when I was little, but it was more of an excuse to flirt with girls than anything else. We never put on plays.

I think that what drives most of us as human beings is the want for something. You might have a hope, or a big dream, or a goal that you haven't yet achieved.

I've never really thought about settling down anywhere. I like to keep moving.

Eating cold tuna fish out of a tin on a porch while two people are in love across a lake - I think that's desperately lonely.

It might look like some incredibly complicated map to get from English period films to American action anti-heroes, but it really is just about not having a plan.

Wood is weirdly a big passion of mine. I really love it, all the way from trees to a finished table. The fact that it was alive and that each piece is different.

My father started his own business, and before that was a freelance lecturer, and my friends are artists and musicians; they don't have real jobs - none of us have real jobs.

I'm a dual citizen in a way. I live in the States and have a green card, so my connection to British politics is almost nonexistent.

It's an imaginative thing we do; it's about immersing oneself in one's imagination. If you're a novelist, you do it with pen and paper. We do it with our bodies.

My grandfather, who is English, was a member of a gentleman's club called the Caledonian, which you can only be a member of if you have Scottish lineage.