I did listen to 1920s jazz or Al Johnson and a lot of early singers coming out of England. I would branch out a little bit to get a sense of the world that he might be coming into, in the '30s when jazz was changing.

I don't think I'm ugly, but I never thought I was that special.

I want to go to the extremes and transformation is something I'm fascinated by. At the same time, you can transform but you can only really put what you've got inside you into somebody, so there's always going to be a degree of you inhabiting any role.

I'm not good at just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, hoping that the perfect role is going to turn up.

If you can have a show that has quite strong morals and cover important themes but be able to put them out to a broad audience, that's an interesting thing.

I never went to stage school or anything like that. It was always plays, productions at school and things like that. The thing for me with acting was it was the only thing I could fully concentrate on. I loved playing sports. I didn't really love studying.

If I look at the people that I look up to, a lot of them don't come to the forefront until their early to mid-30s. I think the most exciting roles are definitely yet to come.