There's nothing nicer than coming back to your village, where people like my mum's friends take the mick out of me. I prefer that to the craziness of Hollywood.

I went to an all-boys school and hated feeling like one of the crowd.

My bedroom's like an armoury.

Each year we go to the Cannes film festival and I tend to have all my friends pile in the back of my car and we'll drive from London. The poor production company think they're only putting me up and suddenly they've got eight people sleeping on my hotel room floor.

I'm not scared of animals, except for rats. I'll break down in tears if I see a rat!

The Railway Man was a particularly intense and immersive experience. I definitely got carried away. I lost about 35 pounds. I really was incredibly skinny and also quite unwell while we were filming. It wasn't very healthy. I don't recommend it. But then also doing the torture scenes, the water boarding stuff, there wasn't really any other way just to do it really.

On the whole, British actors star in theater, and I think there's something quite grounding about that.