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.

I like television that grabs you by your throat.

One of the great things about being an actor is that you have a completely different challenge every few months.

I really do want to just be able to sit in the corner of the pub with my friends... to just be an actor and still go to the supermarket and not get bothered.

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.

Ring tones are just irritating, aren't they?

I'd never read a piece of television where it's an hour script and it's perfect.