It's nice to have some continuity you can come back to. I feel that in coming home, coming back to London.

I'm a real geek. I love spending time researching a character and reading about them.

There's so much of a desire in the entertainment industry for newness, a desire to build somebody up and then treat them as old news within six months. I think you'd be naive if you didn't try to hold on to your own way of doing things.

Going to auditions is always so nerve-wracking. I don't think they ever get any easier.

I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.

I think [Charles] Dickens was an extrovert and Nelly [Ternan] an introvert, and I think that Nelly saw beyond the fame and adulation and she actually loved Dickens essentially for who he was. So I think he felt like she was someone he could be himself with.

The more you work, the more people can see that you're something different from what's come before.