If a horse doesn't want to do something, you're not going to make him do it. They're incredibly powerful animals.

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.

The only mistake guys can make is to try too hard with their appearance. There's something very unmanly about it.

For work, I have to be living in cities, I really cherish the time when I get to be out in the countryside.

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

It was a movie [The Railway Man] that stayed with me a long time. It's still one of the things I'm most proud of. I got to know the man that I was playing and unfortunately he passed away just before the movie came out. It's one that meant a huge amount to me, and one that I'm particularly proud of.

Nearly every taping or audition has to be in an American accent, so you don't have a choice; you just have to get good at it. I'm sure you can appreciate accents - it's like learning any skill, you have to work at it and work at it and it takes an awful lot of time, until it's muscle memory and you don't have to think about it anymore.