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.

The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.

Playing villains is very liberating because unlike the leading man, nothing is expected of you. Leading men have to look good, they have to behave in a certain way, they have to fulfill an audience's expectations. But as a bad guy, you have free license to take the audience by surprise. And that's what audiences want - they want unpredictability from their villains. The villain's job is to subvert it.

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.

Even at drama school if there was a part of some eastern European thug it would be me.

I think it would be a problem if Hollywood was casting British actors only as villains; if that were the case, then certainly there would be cause for concern.

My father was a waiter basically, and when I got my first professional job as an actor, I left a job that he found me for half the amount of money. So anyone would think that they're stupid, that that would be a stupid move.