In 'Tintin,' it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part.

Rather than something like King Kong where I really went after studying gorillas in the wild and captivity. I based Caesar [ from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] on a real chimpanzee and I worked with Terry [Notary] on a lot of chimpanzee movement.

I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.

Performance capture is a tool that young actors will need in the next 10, 20 years. It's on the increase, as you say. It's not going away.

People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.

(The) process of acting is no different to conventional screen acting, in that it's providing a perfect interface between the director and the performer. So there's no sort of long way around a viral committee of animators.

I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'