All acting is an act of imagination. You are simply conjuring up imaginary circumstances in your mind and responding truthfully to them.

I try not to make plans. God always laughs at your plans.

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.

Our job is to represent the truth of human nature, whether you're playing a tender love story that's set in a coffee shop or whether you're in 'The Avengers,' which is set in a Manhattan which is exploding.

Somehow the past is a safe place to explore our collective cultural neuroses.

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

I feel as though the cardboard box of my own reality has been flattened and blown open. Now I can see the edge of the world.