I wanted to be a painter, really, when I was growing up as a kid. It was one thing that really took a grip on me.

I can get on with all different sorts of people, and I never feel homesick, particularly, or I've never felt kind of patriotic towards any one country.

(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.

What I'm saying is people like Hoodwink are not kind of evil villains, they're part of humanity. We can choose to disassociate ourselves from them and we can choose to pretend they're not there, but they are. We're all together in this.

The learning curve is 'The Hobbit' is being shot in 3D.

My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.

Gollum is Gollum - though in 'Lord of the Rings' he's 600 years old and in 'The Hobbit' he's 540, so he looks a little bit more handsome.