Music is an essential part of my life and I'm completely lost without a good album to listen to or my iPod in my pocket!

I've worked with actors who treat the first two takes like rehearsals. And that's okay. If the camera is on you and we're doing a scene where I'm off camera, I'm treating that as a rehearsal.

When I was younger I was always big; I was a fat boy at school. I had an early growth spurt, and when I went to secondary school I was tall enough to be a policeman.

Character actors aren't a brand in the same way that high-profile leading men are.

I've always been terrified about being bored. I always think being bored is the worst thing. The only strategic decision I ever made as an actor was to try and make each job as different as possible.

You're suspended sixty feet up in the air, you've been up there for three hours, and all the shot requires is that you have to sort of react to getting punched in the head.

I think, because of my background, which is slightly more exotic than the average British actor, I think, I sort of occupied this little niche quite early on of playing the foreign guy. It started way back at drama school, I played an Eastern European heavy, I played the Russian mobster. And I have done all those different ethnic roles, and I think it's partly because of my look, I think I've got an adaptable sort of nondescript ethnicity, which you can't quite pin down, but it's enough to kind of get a flavor of something.