I feel like I'm away for much of my own life.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

I have memories of clouds whisking by while sitting in the pushchair on the roof of my parents' flat. I loved it! I just loved staring at the clouds and dreaming away.

[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

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.

I'm not very geeky. I'm quite homespun. I would say I'm more modern rustic than gadget-orientated. I like woollen things and log fires and whiskey

The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.