[ Stephen Strange] is less strange than other characters I've played. He's lost the power to love, which doesn't make him a nasty person. I just think he's closed-off.

There are other people who don't mind shouting from the pulpit and being judged for it, and they do a hell of a lot of good - real, on-the-ground, life-changing good. So I think it can sometimes be a balancing act.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

People always want to knock you when you're up.

I'm not one for doing the children's party version: "Hi, I'm a character in a movie and now I'm in reality!" I was doing the last shot of the film before reshoots outside their shop. I was starting my run into the frame and I thought, "You are literally ending where this began. The loop of serendipity's too much to not go in and acknowledge it." I just wanted to see the look on their faces.

[Doctor Strange] is still quite cocky by the end of the film. No, I'd say the major curve for him is that he learns that it's not all about him, that there's a greater good. But what he thinks he was doing as a neurosurgeon, that was good because it benefitted people's health was really just a furtherment of his attempts to control death and control his own fate and other people's, but that's still driven by the ego.

I struggle to learn by rote. I've had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.