Actors are their own worst enemies. They quite often will get in their own way, and I have to be encouraged, endlessly, not to get in my own way.

We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.

When you're dealing with killing people and things that are upsetting, that can be a delicate place to occupy yourself for a day.

If you look around us, there are an awful lot of men out there, and women, but mostly men, who believe that they have got a fast-track path to Heaven, if they do the things that they believe God is telling them to do, and I don't just mean Islamic people. I mean Fundamentalist Christians.

One of the great things about drama is that it makes you feel like you're not a crackpot, and that there are other people who think and feel the way you do.

I've never been "celeb-y" actor. You know, you don't catch me falling out of nightclubs at three o'clock in the morning. Well, very rarely! But I find it all a bit baffling, the whole celeb thing and I don't really get it.

One of the things I like about doing historical films is drawing the line between now and then.