I look at the Christian Bale movies, the Batman films, and that shows you that superhero movies don't just have to be about men in tights.

I was brought up by my grandparents. So people go, oh, what was that like? That must have been hard. And you go: No, it wasn't.' It was just completely actually normal because the new norm seems to be whatever you make of it, doesn't it?

Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people need to be told stories. That's all it is. And yet we get treated as though we're important.

The world seemed less scary and I started to like myself a little bit more.

I generally get challenged; I haven't been typecast, which is really, really, nice. It's not something that every actor gets, really. It's luxury. Most actors are capable of it, but they aren't afforded the opportunity to express their variety.

Girls didn't really take much interest in me until I was about 14. But I knew how to talk to them very quickly. What I figured out - that my friends didn't - was you have to talk to women like you're not constantly trying to have sex with them. That seemed to work.

I don't know why I get cast in a lot of period pieces. Stephen Fry told me that I had a face for period, that I look like someone from 1920.