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

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 had a huge imagination. My granddad says I was a bit of a Walter Mitty character.

There's an abundance of exposure when you start working in American films. Inevitably you become a brand and that has to be controlled.

I'm here to challenge myself and to see whether I can shape-shift in an environment that's actually quite daunting, but which I think would be nice to shine a light into. The destination of any interesting drama is that you shine a light into a place that not many people know about.

My father came from an intellectual and studious avenue as opposed to a brawler's avenue. So I had to go further afield and I brought all kinds of unscrupulous oiks back home - earless, toothless vagabonds - to teach me the arts of the old bagarre.

The problem with prime beef is that there are so many people out there selling offal. So you don't know when you're going eat a shitty gangster movie. Because everybody knows there's good stuff to be involved in.