I think one of the main differences between being an English actor and being an American actor is that we have things like the class system in England.I'm middle class. But I've got what some people might consider to be a working-class accent, so you've got those sorts of elements in this country to consider, which, in America, exist, but not necessarily in the same way.

My dad's one of the funniest men in the world. I grew up with him making me laugh so much I'd beg him to stop.

When you do a film, you get picked up in a car, lunch is free. Theatre is really hard, and you get absolutely no money.

I'm sure that my father becoming seriously ill when I was 14 had a lot to do with my going from chubby to fat.

In any kind of comic scene you're going to perhaps push the boundaries of plausibility but as long as there is some semblance of logic I think as an audience you'll buy it and as an actor, when it comes to playing things like that, it gives you something to delve into. When I don't buy into a comic scene is the type of scenario where you'd just go: "Well, that would never happen."

Every audition I get, I agonise over and I put everything I can into it.

Because I was always a fat child, I got fatter and fatter, and I ended up 18 stone and with a 40-inch waist.