I've had friends who have come away who've said, "I shouldn't have become such close friends with the director." You always want to get on with the director, but I personally prefer a relationship where you respect them - you get on really well with them, but they're boss, as it were. It's about trusting your director, for better or for worse. They're the one's seeing what's coming out on the monitors, so you have to try and trust what they say.

Nothing's been changed overnight. It's like watching your cat grow: you see it every day, so you don't really see it change, you wake up one day and it's a bloody great thing. Your friends come round who you haven't seen for a couple months and they're like, "Oh my god, your cat's grown so much again." And I'm like, "Has it?" But when you're living it... I just find that my life has subtly changed bit by bit, so I don't ever really notice it too much.

Each character you play has its own set of characteristics, for want of a better word.

[London is] one of the best cities in the world. There is just so much culture there and so much history and so much diversity. It's just a perfect place to grow up. I studied at the Guildhall every Saturday so I'd always be in town every weekend doing that. I was kind of a city boy really.

When you're forced to watch something in school, you never really enjoy it, you sort of rebel against it in a certain way.

You're always going to have ups and downs - if you look at the careers of a whole bunch of people I respect, some of them have good movies, some of them have bad movies. I remember Andrew Garfield said that the only power we really have as actors - or one of the main powers we have as actors - is our choices. We can make interesting choices, but as soon as you've made that choice, so much else is in play: the director, the script can change, the other actors. All you can do is try to make interesting choices and, once you're in it, just do the best you can.

What is life unless you're having a good time? I don't really have a plan; I just try to dip my toes in different ponds.