I think one of the London Film Festival strengths is that it's set in London but it's not about London. It's about the diversity of this city and it's about world cinema. And that's what London is - London is a place where its identity is always in a state of flux. So, this festival celebrates the way in which it is always changing. That's why London is a fascinating place and that's why the film festival is a fascinating film festival.

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said: "You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognises you." I said: "What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?"

With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role.

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.

I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.

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.

As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.