“The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.”

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and ’90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

It still makes me giggle that I’m paid to act.

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I’d like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I’d like to know.

The awful lesson of history is that we too often ignore people, just because they’re foreigners or different from us.

Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

You’d have to be pretty hard-nosed not to feel some sympathy for the guy [Doctor Strange].

Being someone who is of our sensual reality, Stephen Strange has a lifestyle, he has a sexuality, he’s materialistic.

I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.

It will be obvious to anyone who sees it that he [Doctor Strange] earns that cloak. You think he’s doing all right and then you realise that there’s one massive lesson to learn.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

[Scott Derrickson] is terrific, really sharp on the details, and he’s not afraid to go to dark places.

[Sherlock Holmes] has moved from being someone who was sociopathic, work-obsessed and slightly amoral, into being someone who has a certain degree of a private life, which is very, very private, with The Woman, or Irene Adler.

I’m sort of focused on my long-term goal of carving out a career that’s for life, rather than being a flash in the pan.

It’s great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I’m enjoying.

Those are more universal things than some of the characters I play, who are slightly sociopathic. I keep reminding people I can do ordinary.

Embrace each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-transformation.

I was made to be where I’m at. I just had to go through some challenges, so that I can educate others later.

Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.

Now, we are seeing many of these same companies face the truth about their financial standing. Congress is faced with the challenge of reforming our accounting industry and holding corporate executives responsible for their actions.

To portray a maniac offers a compelling challenge.

Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.

The most complex challenge for an actor is the ability to give dimension to the story from the time that it happened, not from the present.

Academic freedom is being lost by a great many people who dare to challenge Darwinism. That’s a terrifying situation. That’s contrary to the principles of science.