For the first 10 minutes after you meet them, they have the wattage and charisma of movie stars. Then you have a coffee with them and you realize we're all the same, we're all just people. All of the actors in The Avengers are so nice. Marvel has these code names for projects and the code name for The Avengers was Group Hug. It felt very much like a group hug on set.

Chris Hemsworth is like Christopher Reeve in that he can do two things: he can wear a big red cape without a shred of self-consciousness. But he's also funny as hell, and he's so sweet. So with all the fish-out-of-water stuff, he's so funny. So he does almost two jobs in a way.

The language of digital communication is a language we don't understand in a way. People say the internet is like the Wild West in that it's lawless and we haven't worked out how to make it structured or moral.

I THINK IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE CONVENTIONALLY ROMANTIC YOU'VE GOT TO GO ALL THE WAY: A BEAUTIFUL DINNER SOMEWHERE LOVELY, WITH BOAT-LOADS OF FLOWERS, CHOCOLATES AND CHAMPAGNE. BUT IT MIGHT ALSO BE NICE TO WRAP UP WARM AND SIT ON A ROOF SOMEWHERE, WITH A CUP OF HOT SOUP AND YOUR GIRL, WATCH THE PLANES COME IN OVER LONDON AND LISTEN TO THE NIGHT.

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

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.'

Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings - stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility.