Anyone who works in the NHS has superpowers. It's a miracle, it is magic.

Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don't think he's one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do.

It's one of the things that attracted me to the role [Doctor Strange] is the fact that it's a really widely origin story, I mean this is part of it, but of course there's the whole chapter before where he's the neurosurgeon who has the accident. It's fantastic.