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?

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.

There is nothing nicer than playing someone who is cooler, tougher, more virtuous and sexier than yourself and thinking, 'I can be anyone.

In the moment of acting you don't feel like anything, you feel like the person, as much as you can.

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.

Acting is a really simple job - it's just hard to do. You just have to be that person with their background in that situation. That's all it is. My kids do it all the time when they're dressing up and playing games.

I'm at the beginning of it. I'm Elektra's last job before the story kicks off.