I did my homework and didn't go out much, and had a very highly developed kitsch fantasy life where I dreamed of being a dancing girl.

I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

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.

You do the one film that you think is terrible, but it's a big studio film and you hope you'll get another job because of it, because blah blah blah, whatever it is. You know that you hate it, you just couldn't care less if it got made because it's not something in a million years you'd go and see yourself. And it ends up being shite and you just knew it was shite to begin with, and it doesn't do you any favors at all if someone thought you were in another shite film. So I decided it doesn't get me anywhere being cynical. It's not that I want to be.

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.

The harder the circumstances under which you're making a movie, generally the better the friends you make. You're far away from home and so you're kind of lonely, and you end up all gravitating towards each other and the bar every night. It tends to be inversely proportionate to the comfort level on the movie, how close you become to everybody.

Accents are very tangible, blessedly, and if you have to do one, it's a way of getting into character. I can read it through a few times and pretend I know what I'm doing!