My heroes were all in the theatre.

My parents were incredibly inclusive.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.

You just have to take control of your own performance.

You never know when you're taking a job, ever... but you try to take good scripts. That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available. Even then, it's not [really] in your control. Certainly not in film and TV, because there are so many other elements. You just have to take control of your own performance.

I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl — in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else’s backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again [in Colditz], damn his eyes.