If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would've liked to have been John Lennon.

At the Oscars, if you didn't vote for '12 Years a Slave' you were a racist.

I don't see a great difference between someone sending a robot or a drone to bomb people and controlling it on a PlayStation from another country. It's thousands of miles away as opposed to someone in an airplane who is thousands of feet away releasing a bomb.

I grew up in Deptford in south London, and at that time I used to wear toppers, loon pants and tonic suits from shops like Take 6 and Topman. I was a bit of a soul boy, but I had a very eclectic taste in music - I was into James Brown and Bowie; and I was the only kid in the neighbourhood who would also be listening to Chopin.

As an actor, you people-watch, you observe. And the more famous you become, the sad thing is you lose the ability to do that. Instead of people-watching, you become the focus of attention.

You always hope that the cloak of inspiration will fall, and you'll be O.K.

Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you've got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, "That's a really funny Robert De Niro." As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It's like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through.