What I love about the East End is that theres a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.

I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing.

Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.

My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it.

I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me.

What I love about the East End is that theres a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.

It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.