I've always believed that the director does whatever the hell he wants. That's what you sign on for as an actor - I can't stand it when you have actors who are trying to leverage directors into doing things they don't want to do.

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.

Basically, it's somebody who got stuck having to interview me who really wants to be a novelist, so they're writing these novellas and I was like, "It's not true, that didn't happen, they just made all that up! Why don't they just go ahead and be a novelist instead of bothering with interviewing me?"

It was just the two of us, inside there with just mirrors, all the way around us. Everywhere we looked, there were these two freaks, sitting at a table, eyeballing each other.

I'm sure you find it fascinating. It's always interesting for everybody to look at people who've been pushed to the brink. You wonder how you would fare with that. Nobody's interested in somebody who doesn't ever really do anything. I don't have a choice in that. I will always go for those kinds of characters. Each one is a separate choice for me, but I think it's fairly natural to find yourself gravitating towards people who have done extraordinary things.

I feel like I'm pretty good but I don't like to toot my own horn, you know. I want to let the work speak for itself and kind of move on to the next thing.

The risk element only came from acknowledging other people's attitudes toward it, and realizing that they considered it to be a risk for me to do.