I started off as an actor thinking that I would be this Romeo, this dashing leading man. It turns out that I'm a character actor.

Acting can be very selfish and all-consuming.

I'd grown up loving English films, I was a huge Monty Python fanatic as a kid.

The research period of a film is the most exciting part of the process, and filming is sometimes a letdown because when you're dealing with biopic material, the real thing is always much more intricate than the story told in the film.

I started off as an actor thinking that I would be this Romeo, this dashing leading man. It turns out that I'm a character actor.

You have to be in movies that make money to be offered work. Basically that's the equation. There's no real way around that. That said, you don't ever make decisions solely for that reason.

For a long time a lot of people thought I'm British, because I'd done so many roles with English accents. People probably still think it. Or they don't think anything.