Why not provoke some thought and get people talking about things? I like characters that are flawed because we all are. When people break up in a script, you think, Oh, right, there must be tears shed here. But maybe the fact of the matter is that they're both laughing.

I think the fact that us as a race still continues to be very tribal and we haven't really moved away from that over hundreds and hundreds of years of experience.

Some actors might just do one thing, and another actor does another thing. I do an awful lot of preparation with the script, really. What I do is repeat the script, over and over and over again. Through that, it's almost like it seeps into my enamel. I'm reading all the characters, as well as my own. That is where the bulk of my preparation goes into.

It's such a terrifying thing when mobs of people get together and persecute foreigners.

Trying to identify and understand, as opposed to judging, is very important for me, in approaching characters.

I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.

I just went off for two months traveling around Europe on a motorcycle and pretty much turned my phone off. I did 5,000 miles with my dad. We went through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Italy... and then I did Spain and France by myself.