Brain surgery is a fairly aggressive process. There's a lot to get through. There's the beautiful, delicate shaving first, which is really lovely. There's a wonderful ceremony of putting all the covers on, so only the little bit you're operating on is revealed. But once they make the incision and tear the skin back, the drill comes out.

I am in the public eye, and I accept that my actions may be open to question.

It's ridiculous, but it's horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn't is lying.

The thing to remember is that the work comes first, and not to get distracted by anything else. If you keep focused on the work, everything else will fall into place. That's my mantra now.

People come up to me and they're usually nice, but as it goes on you realise that some people aren't nice. Some people are not nice at all.

Fear is really powerful; it's really useful to me.

I still take work if I think it's good. If I like the script, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.

If you don't have the good fortune to work a lot then you take any job you get offered, whether it's a good job, fun job, a bad job, horrible job, whatever, you just take what you need to take. But I'm lucky in that - at the moment anyway and hopefully forever, but who knows - I get the chance to pick jobs for the kick of it and the fun.

I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.

I do find it strange, doing magazine shoots. Photographers always go, 'Why don't you like to have your picture taken? That's what you do for a living anyway. Just pretend you're acting. It's the same thing!'

Shooting films in Britain is always difficult, because we've never got enough money to make them.

I've seen beautiful actresses get spat at or just someone trying to get a rise out of them so they can get an extra hundred bucks for a photo. It's really rough.

Until I'm on the set of a film, to me it's still not for real.

Every time I do a movie, especially an animated movie, I just seem to scream and shout and hyperventilate for money.

I look at the Christian Bale movies, the 'Batman' films, and that shows you that superhero movies don't just have to be about men in tights.

I don't really... go to 'the opening of an envelope.' I don't really turn up to all the events, you know what I mean? If I'm involved, I'll go, and if there's a good friend who needs support, I'll go, but otherwise... I don't go. I'm probably just a bit like my grandparents; I like staying in.

Basically, every character I've ever played, I've based entirely on internal conflict. And I love doing that, because I think it's very human.

I'd like to have stayed in the Scouts beyond the age of 12.

Shakespeare's stories are still very strong. He structured fantastic stories about things that were fundamental to the human being and psyche.

I like cooking, but I don't think I could be a chef. Everyone from the ground up does terrible hours, whether you've just walked in off the street and you've got no experience, to whether you're the head chef. You can work 14 or 15-hour days. It's really, really intense.

I actually went to drama school at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow, so I stayed in my home town the whole time. However, I see more of my friends now than I did then. It's strange.

When I started acting, I thought if I got one or two jobs a year I'd be lucky. So yeah, my career has gone so much farther than I ever suspected it would, and as such I feel lucky for everything I get. I feel thankful and grateful.

I think fear is one of the natural states of most actors, to be honest.

I don't mind playing somebody who's not likable, or makes the audience feel slightly conflicted.