It has to be said that the bad guys are often more interesting than the good guys because you get to indulge part of your nature that hopefully gets subsumed most of the time. But I just like playing interesting characters, and variety's the spice of that, as it is with life, I suppose.

I love characters who are clever and smart, and you have to run to catch up with. I think there's something very appealing and rather heroic in that.

I often stop when I'm doing something, in the middle of rehearsals or some other job, and I try to take a minute to think "Okay, this might be as good as it gets, so drink it in, appreciate it now". So far, I've been lucky because another job has always come along to equal the last.

I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru.

I think doing different accents is part of the job of acting, really. It's something else that I quite enjoy the challenge of, to be honest.

When you're playing a real person there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.

Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It's not the time that matters, it's the person.