“[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’ve never been front and centre as an iconic American character [like in Doctor Strange]. Day to day, you know you’re painting on a very big canvas.

I really cannot get over the generosity of our Tibetian teacher. He said, “Don’t punish yourself. You’re going to be a student at a university in the north of England. You need to have your experiences and have your fun, and not judge yourself. Don’t live in guilt and regret.”

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.

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

It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.

Marvel always make it fresh so you can give it your personal twist.

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.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

I think playing any iconic role when you’re stepping into big shoes, into the shadow of people who have come before you and you can’t process that.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.

I’ve always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

I tell my wife all my secrets.

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

I was brought up in a world of privilege.

I’m interested in art for all. I don’t want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

I do think that has a certain subversiveness to it. Even if it’s not on a geopolitical level.

I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you’re a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that’s pretty cool.

Always keeping [the other prisoners] as murderers, thieves, that sort of thing, which has a certain irony to it, I guess. It’s a curious thing.

I like radio and live performing stuff. I don’t like the television stuff as much. Some people do. It takes a certain breed of cat. .

It is the essence of certainty to be established only with reservations.

The price of training is always a certain trained incapacity: the more we know how to do something, the harder it is to learn to do it differently.

That is very good. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false. Know for certain that God without form is real and that God with form is also real.

In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn…to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God-this is the challenge and the way.