If you look weird, you can blame the role, you know? So no one's going to tell me I'm having a mid-life crisis.

When I was playing Dracula I had to switch off from the reality and fall into this fantasy world. Otherwise I just couldn't cope with what I was doing. It's about switching off. It is about trying to flick a switch, which you have to do.

I'm very, very close to my mum and dad. My mum is only nineteen years older than me, so she could be my older sister, which is really nice.

For your own self-respect and sanity, your creative freedom, you have to be careful that you don't rely too much on other people's opinions of what you do because it can stunt and inhibit you.

Not everybody's a great singer, but people can get better at singing. There's great singing teachers out there. It's a muscle, you just have to train it.

When I left school, I got a job in a shoe shop and I used to save 15 quid a week and pay for my own singing and acting lessons.

And I knew that, being an actor, you have to take the rough with the smooth and the highs with the lows. That's how it is.