“Why this character [Doctor Strange] is being introduced, to open up the next chapter. A”

I’m always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That’s great fun, even though it’s as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.

I was very keen to work on the script with Scott Derrickson and [C. Robert] Cargill, and working out the important story beats, changing lines, upping the comedy, changing the pace, all of that was great fun.

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.

[Doctor Strange ] is slightly more specialised than Spider-Man or Superman or Batman, but he’s very loved by people who know him.

Laughing and crying are really similar – what happens to your body. It’s a very similar process in your diaphragm. Like a musician, you have to do your scales once in a while and warm up your voice.

I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. But I’m here to tell you I’m quite the opposite in real life. In fact I’m a f**king fantastic lover.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a ‘desert rats’ tank operator in the Second World War.

I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I’m ripped, doing something I wouldn’t normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson.

I keep myself amused and others confused

I just increasingly enjoy the quiet moments when I can be on my own with my friends and family, or with a book, having a live experience. That’s really what I crave, and I always have done.

As an actor, to be part of that story’s [Marvel univerce ] terrific. I’ve enjoyed it so much as a fan and now I’m getting to have a go myself.

When I was young I became kind of a party animal. I had a massive crash. My health suffered. I was just overdoing it. That person could not be further from the one who emerged from that earlier experience. I regressed massively.

I’d shift disciplines, whether it was musical instruments or sports or whatever, and it’s the same with that.

There are things that are a given, that you’ve already established, and obviously, visually, certain iconic things that can’t be completely removed, like a certain hat or a certain coat in my case.

New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I’ve always had dear friends here – family, actually, I would say.

[Season 4 of Sherlock Holmes will be] myopically dark. You’re talking about the end of the universe darkness. You can’t see in front of you and would walk into everything dark.

First of all, when you have a doctor who cut the leg to prevent the patient from the gangrene if you have to, we don’t call butcher ; you call him a doctor, and thank you for saving the lives.

…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.

Think of the war against terrorism. In my view, Washington’s approach can be compared to a doctor constantly banging away at a tumor instead of removing it surgically.

What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.

A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.

People have a tendency to cast me more as lawyers and doctors and just rich guys, rich assholes basically, a lot of rich assholes. That’s what I’m normally seen as, you know.

We have the greatest hospitals, doctors, and medical technology in the world – we need to make them accessible to every American.

A pregnant woman facing the most dire circumstances must be able to count on her doctor to do what is medically necessary to protect her from serious physical harm.