Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorising them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.

If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.

I thought theater people wouldn't see me if I hadn't trained. I didn't want to just be the Brideshead guy, to spend the rest of my life wearing waistcoats. I got the chance to try everything. Not just Romeos, but pimps and grandfathers and even one role as a woman in a Naomi Wallace play called Slaughter City.

I am no saviour. I’m absolutely the last person on the planet who can practically help. I don’t know how to make the different types of therapeutic feeding milk. I’m no chemist. I’m no doctor. I’m no engineer. I can’t manufacture polio vaccines or organise their transportation to the health centres in Saramoussayah or Bissikirima. I can’t build schools, or design drainage systems. I can’t provide the women and children of Mandiana with water.All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now.

I would always play the baddie, incidentally.

I definitely go through periods where I'm in a particular mood, or there's a consistent imaginative context that I feel I'm in, and I'm drawn to certain things. I can sometimes feel it when I'm moving away from something that I was once interested in - an idea or an exploration of particular relationships. I go, 'Well, I think I've done that and I don't want to do it again.'

I always thought of running as just dancing forward.