Then there's your diet. You cut out sugars, fat, soy sauces... anything that's nice. Tea and coffee is replaced by boiling water with lemon. It's amazing how quickly you get into it. There's also herbal tea and a lot of water, obviously... about two litres a day.

I think it's important that you always transform if you can. That's what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can - that's the key to longevity.

I'm from East Sheen, I went to public school where I learned Latin at the age of nine, and certain expectations were made of me to go to St Paul's, Oxbridge maybe, and all that kind of thing. And I failed systematically to meet the mark - who I am and what I should have been are two very different things.

I'd learned how to lie and manipulate from an early age so a combination of that, desperation, having to have my own fridge and my umbilical cord back... I had to go out into the world. Then some angel somewhere said: "Have you considered going to drama school?" And this sounded like the solution to all of my problems.

I'm from a nice, suburban, middle-class family, but my tattoos remind me where I've been.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.

I think I had only been working nine months when I got Star Trek, and it was huge. It was very overwhelming. So that opened my eyes a bit at an early age, kind of how not be frightened when walking into a responsibility of something like villain in Batman, or a Hobbit, or whatever it is.