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.

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

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

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.'

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.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.