I try to just be open to what the next experience is and how it makes me feel, just reading a project, or trying to get involved with a project, or thinking about a project, and what particular emotional flavor that brings. To me, it's never really about planning the next thing, or the career arc. It's about investigating how I feel, from project to project, and finding things that I haven't explored and what that would be like.

I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist.

Steve MCQueen created an entire family to tell one man's tale and I am delighted that so many of this family have also been recognised today. I am hugely grateful to the Academy for this great honour, and, of course, to Solomon Northup for sharing his story through his breathtaking book.

My father, Arinze Ejiofor , was a musician and a doctor. Nobody's ever asked me about that combination and what growing up in that environment was like.

This is going to sound completely absurd, but I do sometimes feel like the enjoyment of an awards ceremony or the pride in the finished article hasn't ever surpassed the joy of doing the work, of making it. The doing it is really the bit I'm there for.

Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people Ive ever encountered in my life; one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with. To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion.

I feel that audiences are very sophisticated, and part of my challenge is to keep them engaged because they are so complex.