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.

I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.

I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.

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.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'