I imagine like most of us that I'd like obscene amounts of money but the people I met and worked with who have those obscene amounts of money and have obscene amounts of fame have awful lives. Really. I mean hideously compromised lives. And I can go anywhere. No one knows who I am.

It seems a bit weird to call someone your girlfriend when you have a child.

Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?

In fact my favourite thing is the wig because I'm a very lazy actor so every time I put it on, in order to keep it straight, they kept on telling me to tip my head back because otherwise I was eating it all the time.

I am not a sex symbol.

I could release myself into acting in a way that I was not released socially.

I went off and read the books after the audition and I read all four books in one sitting - you know - didn't wash, didn't eat, drove around with them on the steering wheel like a lunatic. I suddenly understood why my friends, who I'd thought where slightly backward, had been so addicted to these children's books. They're like crack.