Christmas is a really special day since I support the initiative 'Helping Hands' and I celebrate Christmas with the kids there. I take them to a place they would enjoy, like a hotel or fun zone and spend time with them as we play together and I become Santa for them.

I have been a vegetarian for a few years now, and I am honestly managing it quite well in sync with my workouts and maintaining my physique as well. From whey protein to cottage cheese to tofu, all my proteins, carbs and far content are well in place and balanced.

Each medium has its own beauty and way of working. While television offers immense reach and long-running shows, films are shorter and they are presented differently. With theatre, it's the thrill of instant feedback.

I was a very ziddi kid. One Diwali, I was hell-bent on lighting an anaar on my palm, and it burst on my palm! It is not a great memory but I still remember that.

When I am travelling or shooting outdoors, and if there is no gym around, I do pull-ups. If there is a bar somewhere, I manage push-ups, squats, and generally I just sweat it out in the room or my vanity van. But I make sure my workout regime is never hampered at any cost!

There is a beauty of seeing a picture and making out what the story behind it might be.

When I was a kid, I loved having muffins and cupcakes and I still like them with coffee.

I can't imagine childhood without 'Planet of the Apes.' I was nine or ten when the first one came out.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

When I decided that I might want to do acting for a living - I don't know where it really came from, since there was no school play or any of that - my mom gave me her blessing. I had to get a scholarship - that was the only way I could have gone to drama school.

I just think political correctness is crap.

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.

I tend to read non-fiction.

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There's that period in the late '90s, the early 2000s, where I didn't do a great deal.

On set I keep myself to myself; I'd rather the director speak up. I'm not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.

Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.

I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

I don't think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list.

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.

I didn't do drugs. It wasn't my thing. But the drink was terrible. Today when I look back, it's like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much.

We lived in a flat that you could pretty much fit in my current kitchen. No wonder people drink! I can't understand why they don't throw themselves off the balconies.