You have to go where the good writing is.

If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.

I'm not very good at strategizing.

I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.

I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

I grew up in London, one of four children. We were a very loud family, not a lot of listening, plenty of talking. My mum was a hearth mother: she loved to gather us all around her - Sunday lunches were a big thing. She was very good at thinking on her feet - people used to say she should go into politics.

I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.

Having been on a private jet only two or three times, it's one of life's great luxuries.

If you believe - which I do - that acting is a bit like advocacy for your character, then of course I want to find the positive points.

It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

We had a good time mucking about during 'Band of Brothers' when we were young and single.

There is a latent anger in a lot of people that went to boarding school at an early age. I was eight. And I loved it over the five years, but I think the adjustments for eight-year-olds are a lot. And I think it informs who you are for a long, long time.

None of us, remember, knew that 9/11 was gonna happen. We didn't live in a state of anxiety and fear about Osama Bin Laden. The CIA might have, and they failed to prevent it. But the general public didn't have any knowledge. Now we have knowledge of it, and it's a very clear and present danger in our lives.

Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.

I want to do theatre and film and direct my own things and develop.

I had no ambition to go to America and be in a TV show. It's not like I've rejected something or decided that I've found something better. Your life just takes you off in strange and different directions.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

I'm not averse to telling people off.

If you have the same drive and passions that everybody else has - for example, if you're trying to do the right thing for your family and do the right thing for people you employ - then you can be forgiven quite a lot.

I am Damian Lewis, not Daniel Day-Lewis.

A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.

In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'

I've always had a 'Work hard, play hard' attitude to life - I still do - but sometimes you get involved in something that needs a calm, methodical approach.

I have tried girl-next-door. I have done the role of a corporate woman. A love story is something that I would like to work on.