I just like voicing films in general. I do a lot of documentary work and it's a short hop really to narrating a character, especially if you're on film and you're there in a visual way. It sounds obvious, but voicing an animation really focuses you on the way that you're communicating through your voice. It's a very specific ability that you need to be able to have in order to pitch it just right.

I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work."

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

The Secret Service I'm really excited about because Matthew Vaughn directed it. I've done a couple of movies with him - Stardust, which is one of my favorite films, and Kick-Ass, which is just a crazy, wonderful movie.

All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.

I just like voicing films in general. I do a lot of documentary work and it's a short hop really to narrating a character, especially if you're on film and you're there in a visual way. It sounds obvious, but voicing an animation really focuses you on the way that you're communicating through your voice. It's a very specific ability that you need to be able to have in order to pitch it just right.

Interestingly, this character [Doctor Nash] is probably closer to me than somebody like the evil Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood or Lord Blackwood who wants to take over the world in Sherlock Holmes. This is a character that's English, he's based in London, and so it's closer to me than a lot of stuff I've been doing recently.