If youre serious about what youre doing, youve got to keep your head and follow your instinct. Maybe you wont reach the same dizzy heights as others, but you will get something back.

When you're playing a character, you don't really want to have an opinion about where you're going to end up. Otherwise, you can't really stay in the moment and in your character.

Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts-those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence-then why bother existing? to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place.

Some kids are good at math, some kids can run, and acting was an interest of mine. Because I knew you could do it for a living I decided, that's what I'm going to do.

I used a bike in London and that's it. I learnt a lot about biking, and really got into. Now I cycle regularly.

I think Danny Boyle's got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a 'Trainspotting' sequel.) But, I mean, I don't look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don't really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I'm actually not Scottish, either!

For me, there are two different things that make Sherlock Sherlock. One is, you know, within the books: obviously he's a genius with an attention to detail, his ravenous hunger for all aspects of knowledge that might feed into his work. But the major thing that makes him Sherlock is his relationship with Watson - their friendship. For me, that, I guess, is the biggest side, the more interesting side than the genius.