In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.

You have to go where the good writing is.

I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.

It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.

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.'

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because theyve been on reality TV or something.

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.