The character, as written on the page, is just a blueprint for a human being.

What le Carré is so good at is unpicking something very specific about Englishness. That is almost part of why I think he wrote the novel. You can feel le Carré's anger that someone who has had the benefits of an English education and an English upbringing is using that privilege to basically do the worst things imaginable. There is an anger in the book about that.

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

My instinct is to keep people guessing. I think as an actor your greatest strength is your versatility, I suppose. The blanker the canvas, the easier it is to project the illusion of a character onto it. I think there are many actors who do that very successfully.

I would always play the baddie, incidentally.

I have a little office in my house and it is an absolute pigsty but I know exactly where everything is and there are little things stuck all over the walls, and papers in in-trays and files I have saved on my computer and playlists I have made on my iTunes - things that take me to a place that I think is appropriate.

I fear looking back and wishing I had done things I hadn't.