For brain surgeons it's particularly difficult to deal with failure. It was fascinating to learn about that whole world.

Cumberbatch - it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn't it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn't keen on me keeping it.

If people ask, 'Are you Sherlock Holmes?', it's horribly naff, but I say, 'I'm not, I just look a bit like him' - which is how I feel. There are bad attributes of his that I really don't share!

There are things that are a given, that you've already established, and obviously, visually, certain iconic things that can't be completely removed, like a certain hat or a certain coat in my case.

[Doctor Strange] is still quite cocky by the end of the film. No, I'd say the major curve for him is that he learns that it's not all about him, that there's a greater good. But what he thinks he was doing as a neurosurgeon, that was good because it benefitted people's health was really just a furtherment of his attempts to control death and control his own fate and other people's, but that's still driven by the ego.

Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you're doing an origin story there's a lot of room for manoeuvre.

I tell my wife all my secrets.