I want to be challenged, I want to keep challenging myself - whether or not it's changing yourself physically or just pushing yourself to a certain extreme. I get bored quite easily so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.
The most romantic things are very small, kind gestures from people you love.
What is life unless you're having a good time? I don't really have a plan; I just try to dip my toes in different ponds.
Each character you play has its own set of characteristics, for want of a better word.
Being blinded by young love. I remember the feeling, when I first fell in love - you don't see the world the same way that other people see it. You don't see the same boundaries.
The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones.
I think it's more important to seek the truth than to try and be perfect, to be honest.
Often you find actors have big hearts; they're quite emotional people. Talking to actors who date other actors, and talking to people who deal with other actors, they often get emotionally caught up in lots of different things. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves. They feel things quite a lot - often to the nth degree, which I can imagine could make it quite difficult to date some of us. I think it's about having an emotional availability that you can kind of draw on. But I'm also searching for that. I'll be searching for the answer to that question for the rest of my life.
I looked pretty crazy but at the time, you don't think anything of it. You think, "I've got an amazing job. I'm working and this is cool." I remember I was being fit to go to a premiere for something at Burberry and Christopher Bailey, who designs the clothes there, saw a picture of me and I looked weird. I had short black hair, hardly any eyebrows, I looked very very thin and he went, "We need to put Douglas in a campaign." So four days later, I was shooting a Burberry campaign because he had seen me looking crazy from the show so that was kind of funny.
On a Friday night, I like to go out because my friends, who have been working normal hours, just want to let go after a stressful week at work.
When you're forced to watch something in school, you never really enjoy it, you sort of rebel against it in a certain way.
I love to ride horses. I've ridden since I was a kid so I got to do some riding, which was a lot of fun. But most of the stunts were left to the girls. It's the girls rescuing the guys mostly. So it was kind of really kick-ass, girl power. It was wonderful to watch. It was particularly sexy. They would come in and just slay in these choreographed pentagram of death fight scenes. It was pretty impressive.
As an actor, Hollywood would be a horrible place to go if you weren't actually invited.
I've always had a social awareness. My favorite channel on TV is BBC News 24. For a while, I had to have it on repeat in my house. I've always been interested in what's going on in the world.
I wanted to become an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is one of the main drama schools in London where you go when you are older. But I was doing the junior one when I was a kid. And some friends there had agents. I was fourteen and I was like, "I want an agent! It sounds awesome!" I had no idea what that was. I thought those guys looked like men in black. They were hanging around in suits all the time. So I luckily got a very good agent in London and started auditioning. And then when I was 16, I got my first film and I've been working ever since.
I'm quite severely dyslexic so I struggle with acting in certain ways. I always have to put in triple the amount of effort, which would always frustrate me a lot. I suppose that some people can just look at a script once and know it. That's not me. I really have to spend a bit of time with the lines. But it's my job and I've got better and better at it. If you're learning a lot, things start going quicker. Doing the lines with repetition and you just get it in your head somehow.
Some people can very easily switch off and be guilt free, not that what I'm doing is about guilt, but they can completely disconnect and not care because it doesn't affect them. I've always really cared about what happens and felt a certain responsibility.
We live in a beauty-obsessed age and success sometimes appears to hinge solely on the presentation of an image that is acceptable to the press.
I've had friends who have come away who've said, "I shouldn't have become such close friends with the director." You always want to get on with the director, but I personally prefer a relationship where you respect them - you get on really well with them, but they're boss, as it were. It's about trusting your director, for better or for worse. They're the one's seeing what's coming out on the monitors, so you have to try and trust what they say.
The movie is so fun. I've done period pieces before but nothing with this twist. And the movie is just full of such wonderful people, such young actors - people like Matt Smith that I've been friends with for a while.
I've spent a lot of my teenage years working on sets. I've missed out on more than just playing rugby, but I think I've managed to keep my feet on the ground and keep my friends around me.
It's better to think of life as a proper journey with a beginning and an end. Maybe, I can settle for being immortalised on screen.
For the moment, whenever I read, it is normally scripts. You start a book and then you think, 'I should be reading these five scripts.
The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones, but it's not like working a 9-5 job and only having two or three weeks off a year. I may not have seen my girlfriend for two or three months, but then we can spend two or three months together solidly.
Sometimes a script comes along that really makes you sit up and pay attention... 'Life at These Speeds' has an emotional intensity that really kicked me in the guts.
