“Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don’t know anyone on Earth who doesn’t, but I do find it funny. I look in a mirror and I see all the faults I’ve lived with for 35 years and yet people go kind of nuts for certain things about me. It’s not me being humble. I just think it’s weird.”

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.

I had to kiss it [ playing Hamlet] goodbye because Marvel have to plot things for the next three, four years.

Doctors and nurses do crazy hours and keep an ideal afloat through the love and care that they have for their craft and their patients and the institution of the NHS. We should be very proud of it.

The biggest lesson Stephen Strange learns in this film is it’s not all about him.

There’s so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

There are other people who don’t mind shouting from the pulpit and being judged for it, and they do a hell of a lot of good – real, on-the-ground, life-changing good. So I think it can sometimes be a balancing act.

Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don’t know anyone on Earth who doesn’t, but I do find it funny.

If I’d had fame early on, I’d have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.

I wanted to take the audience on a journey where that transition was funny and awkward. It’s the same cynicism that [Strange] has.

I’ve realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.

You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged.

I’ve been reading the books. It’s the origination, it’s the primary source. You should always go back to the books.

I had a very sparse comic upbringing – not because I was being whipped into reading Chekhov and Dickens, but I read Asterix on holidays when I was a kid, and Tin Tin was featured, I remember, for a few years.

Don’t ask permission, just ask forgiveness.

To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.

It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.

As I look at our world Today, I am deeply impelled to Action. The “call” has spoken to me and I will humbly, gratefully and aggressively respond.⁣

Be humble, believe in yourself, and have the love of the world in your heart.

If you want the cooperation of humans around you, you must make them feel they are important – and you do that by being genuine and humble.