“We should have a conversation when we hang up.”

I got live tweeted once by someone who was opposite my home in some rented accommodation. He was actually describing on twitter what I was doing. ‘I took a shirt off, I went to the window, I put a shirt back on… ‘ And I’ve got blinds in my flat!

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?

I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.

So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

You’re always in a rush, or else you’re too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.

Our inner conversations often block our natural energy of peace, happiness and love.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.