“I try to take the time to appreciate and I certainly do appreciate and I do feel proud but that is probably one of the things I need to work on, building a bit of time for myself.”

The truth is – I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven’t had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?

Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

My whole career has been fulfilling my childhood fantasies, playing characters that are larger than life, getting to play a knight, an elf, a prince, and a soldier.

The philosophy that I’ve embraced isn’t about sitting under a tree and studying my navel.

My experience of singing, as an actor, was that there’s a different creative feeling of freedom. The acting thing is a bit more defined and cerebral. I can see why people would want to cross over. If you have so much freedom on stage then perhaps you want to be confined a bit, and vice versa.

Dyslexia is not due to a lack of intelligence, it’s a lack of access. It’s like, if you’re dyslexic, you have all the information you need, but find it harder to process.

Maybe our generation is more about sex, but it feels like romance is dying out.

I remember one time that I was filming a scene in which my character rides through Troy on a chariot. I just looked around at this incredible set thinking ‘This is the life’.

I need to keep reinventing myself.

The philosophies behind meditation are very current today and are a way of finding some sort of peace.

Although it is a fantasy film, it’s as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth.

I’m amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I’m so lucky, though my mum always says, ‘You make your own luck.’

People come into your life and people leave it… you just have to trust that life has a road mapped out for you.

When you start falling for somebody and you can’t stop thinking about when you’re going to see them again, I love that. Women are beautiful. They deserve to be cherished and respected.

I don’t do a film unless it has a sword in it. And if it doesn’t have a sword in it, I insist that they have one in the same room to keep me comfortable.

I love it. I hate that word (fatherhood), but I love being a father; it’s changed everything in so many ways.

My business is not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best of what God made.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Myself I must remake.

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

Hammer your thoughts into unity.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.

A common soldier will make an empire, but he will eventually meet his fate and be condemned to the Great Rock.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.