“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.”

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.

Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it’s so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well.

I’m quite sensitive to people noticing me. There are times when I’m relaxed, then others when it does make me self-conscious.

I realised quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.