“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.”

We all want to escape our circumstances, don’t we? Especially if you are an actor.

All the backstories are there but not talked about.

I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.

Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.

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.

This whole thing that’s happened to me, you see, this whole success thing..it hasn’t yet really compromised the position that I took a long time ago in Texas