You can't really do a lot of research for being a mass manipulating, murdering super-villain.

It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.

When preparing for a role, a month is a luxury. Sometimes you've maybe got two weeks before you start on something. So you have to learn how to do it quickly. And the longer you have a role, that it lives in your imagination, the more you're going to be able to contribute when you get on set. Because it's really about your subconscious having time to sit with the part, so you're out doing something and then something occurs to you, you know?

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

In the old patrician world there was a custom once a week you had to eat a meal with your slaves and get to know them as people.

I keep mementos from everything I've done.

Often in films there's more of allowing the actors to make the dialogue fit better in their own. Also, you get to a location and the geography is different, so the lines don't line up the right way, so you do have to change stuff.