I am a fan of the Coen brothers. I'm not a fanatic. I'm a big admirer. They create unique worlds, and there is a real atmosphere to their films. Not everyone can get that. That's a massive part of their appeal: you can recognise them. Like all the great directors or artists, you know it when you see it.

Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?

I have a very extreme state of mind. Things are very black or very white.

I like being called 'Mr. Freeman' occasionally.

Acting is the only thing I'm even vaguely good at and acting is something that I think I do know about.

If you want your film to be instantly green-lit, your first approach is not to go to a relatively unknown English actor. They're not going to throw millions of dollars at you for that.

'Sherlock' is one of the biggest things I will do, ever - we could never have predicted that level of insanity around the series.

The reason I've never gone for pilot season even as a younger actor, and wouldn't entertain that sort of thing now, is the idea of signing a piece of paper that binds me for six or seven years.

I didn't audition for 'Fargo.' It was a straight offer.

I would wear a full-length cape if I could get away with it - I do love a good swirl in a fog.

I like things that are simple, such as an alarm clock.

To my mind there are not enough things that show the Nazis as human, as smart people, charismatic people, who are not inhuman naturally. But who are able to be fantastically inhuman when they choose to be.

With superheroes and comics and fantasy and sci-fi being absolutely the popular currency in cinema, it's like people have said in endless magazines, it's the revenge of the geeks and all that. There's some truth in that.

I don't get cast as the guy who steps off a yacht in a white linen suit with a martini.

My default state is wariness.

We all know that people who've never been on a film set think it's way more glamorous than the people who work on them.

As soon as a job finishes, I am done with it. When I'm really, really enjoying the job, I love the job, I want it to end because it's supposed to.

What makes Shakespeare eternal is his grasp of psychology. He knew how to nail stuff about us as human beings.

I like uncertainty in roles, and I like uncertainty in art, really.

On the surface, you think you wouldn't have to think at all about being asked to play Bilbo in 'The Hobbit.' It's not prison; it's a good gig. But you know it's going to take a long time, and it does. There are times when you thought: 'Gee, I've not seen my house for months.'

I've got an overly developed sense of what selling out is, and I of course worry about it too much.

I'm afraid I don't have a very pragmatic or unromantic view of props. I don't imbue them with any great sense of mystery or anything.

We can all look on the Internet and go, 'He hates me! Oh, but she loves me. Oh, but he hates me,' you know. And that way, madness lies.

My main priority in any job is when is the soonest I can get back to the three people I love most in the world.