I realised quite early on that, although I wasn't trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.

'Sherlock' fans are, by and large, an intelligent breed, so they've gone through my back catalogue and got what I've done, why and how I've done it. There is some obsessive behaviour, but I worry for them rather than me.

[Sherlock Holmes] has moved from being someone who was sociopathic, work-obsessed and slightly amoral, into being someone who has a certain degree of a private life, which is very, very private, with The Woman, or Irene Adler.

I'm not an overnight success. I've been doing it for 12 years. It's been lovely and varied so far.

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.

It'd be really nice to wake up looking like, I don't know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think "Let's try this on for a day and see how it feels.

The awful lesson of history is that we too often ignore people, just because they're foreigners or different from us.