If there's friends around, I'll cook. Or if I have a girlfriend. But on my own I kind of fell out of the habit of it, and it's a shame really because I know it's good for me. It's something quite therapeutic.

At one point you think, well, it's funny, I could just be a starving actor... So if somebody were to pull the plug right now, there'd be no room for complaint.

We moved to Ireland when I was two and we settled in Killarney, Co Kerry. Where we were living in Germany is very industrial and very grey and my parents wanted to have countryside around for my sister and I to grow up in.

The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really.

As an actor, it's always been good to be working at all.

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 guess in the independent market, I'd be getting offers, but in terms of big studio films, I still have to audition. I don't think my name is that well-known, I don't have much of a following to guarantee box office success yet.