Ladies and babies, and mortgages, for that matter, can all wait. Acting has done a strange thing to me, though. I often sit there, thinking, 'I love this, but I wouldn't put my daughter on the stage.'

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

Most actors hate watching their own films because all you can see is the glaring mistakes, your own tricks and ticks.

As an actor there's a lot of scrutiny and, even when you've had success, it becomes about sustaining that success. A friend of mine described it as a peakless mountain. Even for De Niro there's Pacino and for Pacino there's De Niro.

When I was living in New York, I had this slightly wannabe bohemian existence and took up painting, at which I'm appalling. I also bought several guitars.

I'm trying to buy a house and set some sense of roots because otherwise you're constantly chasing one job after another, and you look back and you've had all these very extraordinary experiences with extraordinary people, but there's not a line of continuity to it.

I think all actors have a similar deal. You want some people who understand. Although it looks great - and is great - there are also shoddy moments when you feel really rotten, and when it's going well, you're not allowed to complain.

I had never been to a fashion show before going to the Burberry show last month. It was an extraordinary spectacle. I was incredibly green and had no idea what an undertaking it is. I also have a new respect for models because they are so close to the front row and must be so self-conscious.

I have this horrific thing where I'm really bad with names and faces. I have an appalling memory. Someone will come up to me in the street and go, 'Eddie!', and I'll try and give myself time by going into overdrive, 'Hey, hi! Nice to see you!' and start a whole conversation because I can't distinguish between who I know and who I don't.

As someone who gets nervous in silences, I spill words rather than really think.

I've played women since I was a kid and I've always enjoyed it.

Making 'Birdsong,' on the one hand you have how prestigious it is and the reputation of the book, which is something that's an extraordinary piece of work. Sebastian Faulkes is a genius. So you feel that responsibility when you're portraying that character that he's imagined and millions of readers have pictured.

Velvet is great. It's warm as well. And it's snug.

I do get stopped a bit now and then, but I can go to the supermarket and on the Tube without being noticed. It's usually me that gets starstruck, especially by TV stars.

When you start out acting, you dream of getting an agent and getting a job. For years, you audition and you get what you can. Choice isn't something that you have much of.

A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

For 'The Theory of Everything,' I was quite low down on a list of actors for the role, and I got the opportunity as a consequence of people saying no to it. So I have been very, very lucky.

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.

I always try to describe making movies like summer camp, or some holiday where you spend all day, every day with a new group of people whom you kind of love and then never see again.

I hope, then, that every one who sees 'The Danish Girl' might be galvanized themselves to lead more authentic lives. How much lovelier would the world be then?

What an extraordinary thing it can be, love, how it will not defined by gender, by sexuality, by race, by religion, by anything. It's something else. It's something other.

I wish I could describe anything I do as conscious or strategized. To be honest, in acting, you have so little control. The only control you have is if you're lucky enough to be in a position, which is not very often, in which you have choice. It's about what choices you make, and for me, it's entirely instinctive.

What's really interesting about actors, is that we all have opinions on how people's careers look, but I think you never have any idea of your own, or what other people think of you.

If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am.