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 was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

I really wanted to get out of England.

I audition for stuff all the time, and what's weird about it is that one's success rate at auditioning doesn't really change. It's sort of at the same ratio of stuff you audition for to things you land.

I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it's one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that's appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you.

I like challenges. If you're involved, as one is, in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself. You don't want to repeat what you're done before.