It's not everyday you get to do a pirate movie, you might as well go for it.

I have no idea whether I am completely sane. I don't think anybody is. I see the world through my eyes. It's sometimes a strange world. I hope I don't hurt people. You hope not to hurt yourself too much, either. Maybe that's the definition of keeping yourself in check?

I cook. I go to farmers markets in London and cook really good sort of organic foods.

I love costume dramas, I love performing in them, because in a funny kind of way, you feel more free. You know about the period, you can read the books, you can see the paintings, but you've never actually going to know what it was like. You can kind of stretch those boundaries a bit.

The thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human. They're full of flaws as much as they are full of heroics. I think the reason that people love them and hate them so much is because, in some way, they always see a mirror of themselves in them, and you can always understand them on some level. Sometimes it's a terrifyingly dark mirror that's held up.

I do think that acting is such an unpredictable job, and you're away a lot. If you're dating somebody outside the industry, it can be hard to understand that.

I made a conscious decision to live my life the best way I could and that meant to publicise myself as little as possible.