The important bit for an actor is the actual shooting of it, because the minute the shoot ends, it's got nothing to do with you anymore.

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.

Rowan Joffe is very specific. I mean, he wrote it as well and he has a very orderly writer's mind and the same applies to his directing.

I think it serves the purpose of the film if the premise is that you're unsure of me because you've only ever really seen me play villains.

I'm not a writer, inherently. Most of the writers I've met have stories they need to tell. I don't have that. I'm an interpreter. I like getting a script, seeing a character and thinking, "Oh, wow, I know what I can do with that."

My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behaviour and what I thought was bad behaviour and tailoring myself accordingly.

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.