“Although it is a fantasy film, it’s as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth.”

When you start falling for somebody and you can’t stop thinking about when you’re going to see them again, I love that. Women are beautiful. They deserve to be cherished and respected.

I don’t do a film unless it has a sword in it. And if it doesn’t have a sword in it, I insist that they have one in the same room to keep me comfortable.

I love it. I hate that word (fatherhood), but I love being a father; it’s changed everything in so many ways.

If you have kids who are struggling with dyslexia, the greatest gift you can give them is the sense that nothing is unattainable. With dyslexia comes a very great gift, which is the way that your mind can think creatively.

The process of making a movie is what I love. I thrive on that. It’s an exciting miracle, a mad adventure. I love being part of it.

I missed my home – like the physicality of my home, I missed my friends and my family mostly and just hanging out and being in your home country – culturally it feels right and that is what I miss.

I think it’s sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

We have to make good use of the time we have. That simple. We have to wake up every day, knowing that it’s not just an ordinary day. We have to take the moment, seize each day.

The role of an actor is to make every character believable.

I don’t care much about the money at all. Frankly, if I get the chance to kiss someone in a movie, they wouldn’t need to pay me at all.

I know you can be up one minute and drop the next, so I’m trying to maintain a steady course so I can have some longevity.

I crave working on those small independent movies because I love going to see those myself.

A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.

Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

I’m trying to mix the cool, independent stuff with the big stuff, but it’s been difficult finding the right roles. It’s been an interesting ride as far as my career pendulum is concerned

I trained for three years at drama school to be an actor – not a celebrity.

I don’t want to be able to see the audience

I’m not sure I’ll ever be famous by anyone’s definition. I can only hope to be allowed by the audience to continue my life’s work.

The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.

I’m glad to play for them. But I’d rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.

Don’t dance for the audience; dance for yourself.

There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.”

It’s spiritual – a good feeling. And although you don’t know them personally, the audience are like your friends.

We were in front of a live audience and I would be acting with the man who was playing my lover, and we used those words, and the audience would titter and laugh, and make me uncomfortable doing the scenes. …