Doing a film and saying, I've done a really dark film and now I have to do a comedy... That's not me. If a script comes along and it's dark I'll absolutely do it and take the consequences. I'm not fussed about the image that goes along with it.

I know what I like in other actors: truth. That's the best. It makes you say, 'OK, I'll go with you on this.'

Anybody can leap off a building.

I never had any boyhood ambitions.

I didn't want to do a zoo show. I didn't want to do a study of someone with mental illness. I just wanted to show someone who was trying to live their life.

It doesn't matter whether you have the happiest upbringing... the young Joe Scot had the most dysfunctional family there could be but it's still a family and it's a really good, strong family. But in spite of that he runs away from home. I relate to all of those things very directly. I hit 40 this year but I still think about being a teenager and hopefully I will for the rest of my life. They are important years.

There is, come to think of it, a kind of Judi Dench quality to McCain.