There are very specific demands, though, in television, and you notice the budget constrictions. It's the time constraint and a purse constraint more than anything else that you notice. But the ambition of the writing and, hopefully, the delivery of it gets better and better because we want to outdo ourselves to keep ahead of a very expectant and hungry public.

We look at science as the ultimate answer for everything yet we are really messy organisms and when the two collide in the upper echelons of medicine you think science will prevail but it's not always that way.

The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It's soul-destroying.

I was always performing, doing silly voices. The teachers realized I could go one of two ways: be creative or destructive.

I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

I have actual acting scars.

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.