“I’m sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It’s an amazing discipline.”

You can perfect genius because genius is not perfection. On his level and his practice and his methodology, it’s almost inhuman. So, that’s been a fantastic arc to play, and boy does it go somewhere in this series.

My hair used to be real long, and my parents were encouraged when I cut it. They thought I was going ‘straight,’ but I was just getting weirder – at least in their eyes. I was getting into the punk thing.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq – a war more than a year away.

I’ll always do ‘Sherlock’ – it’s something I’m not going to give up on.

We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you’d rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you’ve got to have fun with it.

Sherlock being the most prevalent, and they’ve been really good fun.

I was never geeky about anything.

Sometimes being away, on location, I feel like I’m away for much of my own life. I want to be better at staying connected.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you’re Royalty.

This is an odd profession, and sometimes people get jealous, but I haven’t really experienced any of that. Everyone’s been really happy for me, which is really, really great.

Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They’re all “physically inhabited,” for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.

I like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.

I understand from those who adore him, he [Julian Assange] has a great sense of humor which rarely gets an airing because he’s dealing with such serious issues.

My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.

I’m a football coach. I’m not a doctor … They don’t call plays, I don’t do surgeries. We have a great deal here.

I know patients who bring a dozen roses to the doctor’s office. And, boy, the next visit, nobody forgets that. You come in and hey – ‘Here’s the lady who brought the roses’ vs. ‘Here’s the lung cancer.’

Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you’re doing an origin story there’s a lot of room for manoeuvre.

Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken.

It’s an interesting arc. You start with a character [Doctor Strange] who’s likeable and charming but very arrogant and distant. He’s funny but you can see there are massive holes in his life. It’s a very painful transition and all that he becomes is tested so quickly and violently.

That cactus went right through my eye. It left my eye flat. They took me to a doctor, and he said, ‘We’ll have to take the eye out.’ …I fought like a tiger. I said, ‘No! Leave the eye alone.

There’s a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.

I wish medical schools helped us to analyze our healthy and unhealthy reasons for becoming doctors.