Lines are very difficult to learn.

I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

People's hands fascinate me. It's tempting to look at a businessman's left hand and see if there's an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there's a tan line and the skin is pressed down where's he's worked a ring off his finger.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.

The training gave me the building blocks to get through it. A production of that scale, in a theater that big, you are going to struggle to keep your voice at first-run perfectness. All that work I did - the pull-ups and pushups - helped keep my body fit. Hamlet, the show, is a cardiovascular workout of about three hours, never mind the mental, soul-crushing element of it.

I don't call myself an expert because I've played experts. I know a little bit about very little. But it's very hard to not be drawn into saying something, especially if it has to do with the work.