Playing somebody who's obsessed. Playing somebody who is transgressing, and who is really crossing moral lines and ethical lines. That's always interesting.

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.

As an actor sometimes you can be a bit emotional and forceful, and that's not always the way to be.

When I was 15 or 16 - I slept really well then. Now I sleep on a bed of anxiety-tipped nails.

I've done enough for a while and people get fed up of seeing you, but apart from that, although I'm young, I need a bit of rest. You could say I have become a house husband. It's not a new man thing, it's just largely a boring man who doesn't mind staying in the house thing.

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.

I was talking to one of my aunties at Christmas and she said she didn’t think it was ever in my nature to go against the grain, that I was always a good boy. I think she was right - I did always want to be good.