I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before.

I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.

Scott Derrickson breathes humour into a character with a very strong identity in the '60s and '70s, that psychedelia era of Eastern mysticism meeting the West.

There are other people who don't mind shouting from the pulpit and being judged for it, and they do a hell of a lot of good - real, on-the-ground, life-changing good. So I think it can sometimes be a balancing act.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

It's very easy to be cynical about any kind of interference in things that are beyond our skill set.