The Hollywood Foreign Press have just given me a time out from my 20-year midlife crisis. My heartfelt thanks to them.

I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap

I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

Firth - all dodgy 'tache and frantic eyebrows - has got the sexual allure of a man who runs a swingers' club in Surbiton.

In filming you're waiting. You're waiting for lights. You're waiting for people set things up. And when you're not waiting, you're repeating. And neither is conducive to spontaneity, you know. Comedy makes you very, very neurotic because you think, I - but did I nail it?

Certainly, from where I stand, I'm not a specialist in wildly different walks and voices. But I find as much variation and nuance as what satisfies me in what I do. So, I don't find this particularly different. He has his own peculiarities. You're probably talking about a cluster of Englishmen in suits but I've done quite a big cluster of guys not in suits as well, which I've occupied myself with. So, I don't find that this is the one that stands out.