I spent a lot of time [between takes] apologising to Peter Dinklage [Dance's on-screen son, Tyrion Lannister] because I treat him appallingly.

The job is exactly the same, it just goes on for longer on TV. Most feature films are 35-40 shooting days. This has 10 parts, with different directors for each block. We shoot with two, sometimes three cameras.

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.

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

A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?

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.

People like Tywin Lannister are very much victims of that system, and of that environment: 'This is my place, don't threaten it'. I don't know how relevant that is to today. Politics is the most corrupt profession on earth, no matter where you are.