The thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love.

Since my education, I've done quite untraditional things. There are very few Etonians who went to Rada. And far fewer Etonians - certainly when I was there - went to Cambridge. I don't know whether it's the same now. Most people I knew went to Oxford, because it seemed more of an easy bridge.

What is the best use of my time on this planet?

I think a healthy connection with the natural world actually makes us more human.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

Some of the greatest actors have turned superheroes into a serious business: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the first venerable knights of the X-Men, who have now passed the baton to Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.

My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?'