What an extraordinary thing it can be, love, how it will not defined by gender, by sexuality, by race, by religion, by anything. It's something else. It's something other.

I wish I could describe anything I do as conscious or strategized. To be honest, in acting, you have so little control. The only control you have is if you're lucky enough to be in a position, which is not very often, in which you have choice. It's about what choices you make, and for me, it's entirely instinctive.

What's really interesting about actors, is that we all have opinions on how people's careers look, but I think you never have any idea of your own, or what other people think of you.

If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am.

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

I did an interview once where I was asked who I found attractive and I went on about cartoons and Nala from 'The Lion King' - and it's a bit weird but various of my ex-girlfriends actually did look like Nala.

I suffer from a more complex, persistent fear. It manifests itself in nerves, and on film the camera sees even the tiniest evidence of this. So you have to learn that when the director calls 'Action,' you don't go to this place of tension, but somehow you become free.

In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time.

Major film stars tend to do a film and then have a couple of months off. I'm not a major film star; I'm a jobbing actor.

I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.

I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I'm not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it's as a craftsman.

Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.

I wasn't that hard. I wasn't that tough. I wasn't that funny - I looked like me.

My friends I grew up with were so supportive to me. And I'm not the only one who's done well.

When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.

If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do.

I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me.

You're not going to have something set on a council estate that explores all elements of human existence, the variety of experience inherent in any community.

You can't write a screenplay if you've been doing a zero-hours contract. Which means that the people who write drama, the people who commission dramas, and the people who direct dramas all come from a small circle of society.

Art is the job of the privileged.

I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.