I've always wanted to do characters that would help me find my connection with others and connect all of us together. You always want the energy of the character, the spirit of the person, to enter you.

In my career, I've had people talking about different things many times, but then not get nominated.

Because I was playing Idi Amin, who dealt with the colonisation issue, I became aware of this internalised conflict of what it means to be torn between cultures, what it means to be taken over by other cultures.

In a lot of films, they're showing more complete, developed characters of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The larger concern is to be able to tastefully explore the stereotypes, and still move past them to see the core of people.

There are places where life could exist. And we've already discovered that there's been life on certain planets that we've explored. That may just be algae or whatever, but life on Earth began a certain way, too.

There's a thing you confront when you're going into something new and you come to this sort of abyss, and then you push yourself. It makes you try different things.

I was pretty much consumed by this character. Even when I was off, I was continually searching to find something else new about [Idi] Amin, and to embed myself deeper into the culture to the point that, in the end, I was so entrenched that I could tell what tribe someone was from just by looking at them.