Anybody knows who lives with animals, they teach you more about what it is to be a good human than most people: patience, goodheartedness, enthusiasm, presence, forgiveness, focus, restfulness, honesty.

What very often happens when people make films about rich people, the camera is quite mesmerised by the opulence and quite theatrical in fact.

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about.

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?

If I'd been asked to play an Asian man [in Doctor Strange] I would've shown them Benedict Wong.

There are many graphic artists who have interpreted The Ancient One as a Tibetan Buddhist Lama, we're kind of shifting that a bit. We're trying not to be fixed, we're trying not to be fixed to any one thing, any one gender, any one spiritual discipline, and any one race even; we're just trying to wing it beyond that. So it's a new gesture really, just another interpretation.

It's a real comfort zone for me to feel alien.