My parents were incredibly inclusive.

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.

Why do you think so many actors are only half-developed people? It's very easy when you're a young actor to have these intense, explosive friendships for short periods of time, because you can control what's shown of you. Then you go on to your next job and reinvent yourself again. I think it's important to find something constant.

Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.

If you only do issue-based drama, you can become a boring wanker.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

There are lots of different reasons to choose roles.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

I'm always forming bands.

I'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.

I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.

I don't mean this grandly, but it was never my intention to live in L.A. and do a big network show.

A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.

I've always been a narcissist.

I'm one of those pesky Brits.

You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual.

I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.

I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.

Quiet people, people who aren't given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - they're also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

You just have to take control of your own performance.