“Sometimes people get really sniffy about the films you choose if you’ve done more dramatic projects or you’re classically trained.”

I love a film where I get squished by two dumpsters or I fly through the air.

It just seems to me that it’s hypocritical for us as a culture to say, “Bullying is a terrible thing,” when really, they are just reflecting what the society is doing.

Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, “I could sing that song. I’ve got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs.

You do get really exhausted doing films. You work such long hours, and after a while, things can get out of perspective, just like if anyone’s tired, things get on top of them.

I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.

With all this stuff going on, with the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and things like that, we are second-class citizens, definitely.

I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

With Urban Secrets, I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He’s hardcore to play because he’s displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

Be who you like as long as you mean it.

I actually find in America, there’s a slight snobbery about actors who go back and forth between big heavy dramas and popcorn fare. That always intrigues me, because that doesn’t exist in the same way in Britain. And I imagine it would be worse.

I like working on things that are very different and that involve different disguises.

If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people’s songs, you’re asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it’s a song they know very well.

You can feel it coming and you can see where it is going to take you but you are powerless, utterly powerless to stop it. I know now.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

Actors aren’t stupid, mostly, and if there’s a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director’s going for, if you’re aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball.

He is making all of the white people scared only 3 out of 10 people really believe all the stuff that is being said by him.

Oh, no, you’re kidding.’ I go, ‘No, I’m really honest.’

If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor.

You might not like that Facebook shares your political opinions with Politico, but are you really going to delete all the photos, all the posts, all the connections – the presence you’ve spent years establishing on the world’s dominant social network?

The Minnesotans I talk to are really concerned about what the future holds for their families.

And when it’s sold to 50 countries or whatever, for me it’s a great deal. I make movies for an audience so if that audience grows, I feel really honoured and thankful for it.

Work is work, but family is for life. That’s what really matters to me.