I've reached a point in my career when I can demand certain conditions, and one of them is a weekend break every three weeks during the shoot.

I don't have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That's what children do, and that's what CGI enables us to do.

When I'm not filming, I do rock n' roll; when I'm not doing rock n' roll, I do filming.

Each generation needs a 'Spider-Man' to mirror their angst.

If I'd been a rock star, I'd probably now be dead.

I freely admit that I am a bit of a misfit.

Well, I need to be frightened on a regular basis.

I never thought I would be in a film.

I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.

When I was taught Shakespeare in school, it was such an alien, sanitized puzzle, it made no sense.

I don't do celebrity.

Whereas Superman is a godlike guy from another planet and Batman is this mysterious, unknowable billionaire, everyone in 'Spider-Man' is human and flawed.

Howard Marks is a great friend and a great Welshman.

I'm a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.

I never think career.

We're in an age of enlightenment, and we have a choice as a society which path to take.

It's a great life being an actor, and I wouldn't change it for anything.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

I'm becoming more indulgent and less giving as an actor as I get older. I'm immersing myself more in roles emotionally.

Every species has its pub.

If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.

I think Liverpool generates generosity which rubs off - it's a good place to work and to party.

I just don't buy the tabloids.

Acting is not an intellectual process for me. It comes from my heart. It's this strange netherworld of osmosis where I simply become.

I am essentially very shy. Which, I guess, is why I'm very good at not being shy.

I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time.

I consider projects very deeply, but there's always a point in your life where there's a bit of randomity.

Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive.

After you have been incarcerated for so long, whatever story is told in the aftermath is beautiful.

You know you are in a good film when it affects the audience.

I think that Liverpool's particular modern history lends itself to the cinema better than London in many ways. When you go to Liverpool, you absorb that whole sound and humour.

If it is not scary, it is not worth doing.

I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me.

All punk rockers hate Christmas.

A pub can be a magical place.

If you had to find a period in history that would equate to what the Internet has presented us with now, it would be Elizabethan England. It was a world in flux.

I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.

Welsh women aren't the most tactile unless they're your relatives. And then you don't want them to be.

Club DJs don't talk to the crowd.

I just don't take myself as seriously anymore. But as a result of that, I am taking myself more seriously. My ego has gone on holiday, and it can't get a flight back home.

I honed my passion for acting in theatre and education, and I think it's important not to belittle the child audience.

You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

The strange thing is, if I was speaking to drama students about the thing that you should do if you're lucky enough to know or to meet the character that you're playing, I'd say, 'It's obvious: you quiz them diligently about their experience.'

The older I get, I'm really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.

I'm always flabbergasted and overwhelmed by the audience a film reaches.

There is no such thing as a criminal life. Life is life, and life is criminalized. No one ever, in the history of life, has chosen a criminal life. No one has ever said, 'I want to be a criminal.' No one ever has done that.

I'll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It's my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it's not England, it's London.