Most films are written and made with a hero around 35, or even 25.

But the quality of writing in the series [game of Thrones] is paramount. That's probably why all of us are involved in this and all of us are quite so loyal to it, because we don't have to expend a lot of energy trying to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. The quality of the writing is really good, and that's what makes playing a character so enjoyable, whether he's heroic or villainous.

Power is always a corrupting influence. In this mythical time - let's call it medieval, feudal - people in power are dictatorial and don't want their positions of power to be threatened.

By the margin of fair Zurich's waters Dwelt a youth, whose fond heart, night and day, For the fairest of fair Zurich's daughters In a dream of love melted away.

Because [writers] Dan Weiss and David Benioff have done such a great job in adapting them, that's what we work with. It serves no purpose to anybody for actors to come onto a set with a well-thumbed copy of the source material and start querying why this or that line has been left out of the script. It's probably been left out for a good reason.

On an independent film you're lucky if you get one, but ostensibly the job is the same. There's very little difference, apart from the knowledge that there's a captive audience at the end of it - which you can't always guarantee with a movie.

I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.