“I’m always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That’s great fun, even though it’s as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.”

I don’t want to miss things.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I remember very clearly someone saying, ‘Don’t shake hands with the cactus,’ and I thought, ‘Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?’ Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don’t really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it’s not fair that others aren’t doing exactly what you’re doing. I do have that.

Someone will always hate what I say. There’s always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.

I drag a lot of stuff round with me that I don’t need.

I try to work hard. I’m really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it’s a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.

What makes a good animated movie is being able to balance adult and knowing in-jokes and also just out and out funny things that make all people laugh. The idea that it’s actually something that will appeal to a family, that’s the trick.

I’m aware of [Doctor Strange] place within the comic pantheon of it all, the Marvelverse, but I don’t email saying, “When are we doing next film?” I’m excited to see.

I don’t live beyond my means. I enjoy luxury and I enjoy the privilege of it, when I can afford it, and I’m in the situation where it’s been given to me, but I’m very conscious of what is wasteful.

I ate healthily, but there was no snacking, no drinking, no bread, no sugar, no smoking. Afterwards I had a pork belly roast.

We’re living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

You have to sometimes just run with the problem rather than trying to solve it with hi-tech wizardry and lots of planning.

Anyone who works in the NHS has superpowers. It’s a miracle, it is magic.

Doctor Strange is an origin story so there’s a certain room for me improving as well as the character improving.

I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.