I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

If there's any plan or scheme on my part, it's subconscious. Whatever I do tends to be very different from the thing I did last. You're terrified of boring either yourself or anyone else. It's always attractive if it feels like something that you haven't done before. I generally tend to be better, I think, when I'm terrified out of my wits.

My take on people and on the characters I play in Transsiberian, the role you're looking for, is that everybody is more than one thing. We're many things, all of us, and there are times when we are capable of great levity and jolliness and then there are times when the opposite is true.

Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again.

There were moments where I was being kicked in the stomach, and even though I had this brace on to protect me, I still had to prepare myself for it . You can't be relaxed when that's happening. You have to brace your muscles. I can remember thinking as it was about to happen "Wasn't that how Houdini died?" I think it was.

I'm an optimist by nature, myself, I think.