One of the amazing things about Spider-Man is that you don’t see skin colour when he’s in the suit. You don’t see any religious beliefs. A hero is a hero, whether you’re a man, woman, gay, lesbian, straight, black, white or red all over ― it doesn’t matter.

As an adolescent, Spider-Man was what got me through tough times in terms of being a skinny kid.

After a while, you crave pajamas and a shaved head.

Peter (Parker) is not that evolved. Peter wants to tell the world he's a good guy: ' Like me, I'm nice.' He's a 19 year-old kid. He's a kid struggling with being misunderstood. We've all been misunderstood. That's universal too. I like being Peter.

In secondary school I was floating - I wasn't passionate about anything. I did a little sport, but it was pretty joyless because the competitiveness was too much to bear.

I just think I've always been sensitive and had difficulty containing my feelings, and I've always searched for outlets for that, because otherwise those feelings come out in chaotic ways that aren't always great.

Obviously making Peter Parker suddenly bisexual or gay wouldn't really make logical or dramatic sense. It was a hypothetical kind of question about the nature of these comic book characters and the nature of this particular character, and whether sexuality, race, any of those things makes any difference to the character of Peter Parker.