I've always thought of characters like advent calendars. You have Christmas and you have all the little doors over the windows and every day you're allowed to open one more as it gets towards Christmas and you see more and more about what's inside that house.I remember as a kid being fascinated by that and I've always thought of my character as a little bit like that. I like to have secrets and slowly let those secrets out to the audience, sometimes never let them out, but let them see as you open the shutters, open and see a little bit more of a character.

The work I prefer to do are the smaller budget pictures, television can be great but it ties you up for quite a long time.

I'm very glad I'm not a politician. I think it's one step away from the gates of hell, being a politician. I really do. It`s a nightmare.

I've always believed that the great strength of the Internet is that it allows us to communicate with each other, it allows debate. And I think that gay marriage is a huge step forward. But debate is throwing ideas about, and when it becomes sort of a weapon of character assassination, I think that's crazy. I think the situation in America is different from in England, where we have civil partnership, and now the vote on gay marriage has been carried, and whether it will go through Parliament I don't know.

Same-sex marriage will lead to "fathers marrying sons."

What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.

An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props, and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.