I've always believed that you shouldn't want to mend a broken heart, because that's someone you don't want to forget. Scars can be good.
Whether you're a believer or not, I think there's a huge value in understanding the quality of redemption.
I don't know what my limitations are until I reach them. I look for the challenge.
I love life. I'm fascinated by human behavior because that feeds back into my work.
When I was offered the part in Shakespeare In Love a voice in my head said 'not another tights role!
There are always going to be times when it doesn't flow as much as you were hoping. So of course I'm going to fail. And when I do fail I hope I fail better and better, again and again. I am happy to fail.
I think all experience is, in some way, shape or form, filtered down to help you, in your present moment. With Shakespeare, you're trying to act with a fairly archaic language, although in certain aspects, it's deeply modern.
It takes years to establish yourself, and then you have one big film and everyone calls you an overnight success. You think, 'Christ, I've been sweating and crying for seven years.'.
'How do you balance the creative with the biblical?' One could pick up the scripture and read it to oneself and you would be communing directly with that information. As soon as you go into film, as soon as there's a camera, and there's an angle, and there's lighting, and there's editing, you're into the adaptation.
You know what? Joy is the only guide. I'm going to have fun regardless.
The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.
I can only put myself in the process and try to learn through the process. Sometimes it will go well and sometimes it won't.
From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of a Rough Gang - we went around and terrorised all the pupils in school.
I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.
Youth is a predominant factor. We are seeing a young King Arthur, and thereby a young-ish - as I'm into my 40s - Merlin. It was about how to tackle it, from that point view.
I read as much as I could, but really just spoke to Chris Chibnall and asked all the pertinent questions. That made me feel like we weren't going to do an off-the-peg Camelot, which has been touched upon in many films and TV series before. I really just picked his brain and, in doing so, I got fired up by tackling Merlin in a fresher angle.
He [Merlin] is slightly from another world and place, so it [challenge in bringing the role to life] is about having fun and presenting it in a new way. He's more of a politician, and slightly Machiavellian, but there's also a lovely relationship going on between Merlin and Arthur. There's so much to be had, really.
I like the fact that we're stripping the icons away. They're the WikiLeaks for the age that we're revealing, with the transparency of the characters. We're unearthing the truth beyond or underneath the myth. I love that aspect.
So getting that balance between what is honoring scripture and the Word and also acknowledging the fact that by the virtue of putting it on film there's going to be a variation and adaptation, I mean, it's a fine dance and a balance. Our producers and directors have worked so hard to get that right and I'm really proud. I think it's a pretty good job.
I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth is through fantasy.
I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.
I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.
There is a bit of me if I'm pushed in one way I might bounce back and go the opposite.
But it's a strange thing when people judge you because you're not doing some big Hollywood film. Are you suggesting I should be in The Dukes of Hazzard? I mean, hello?
I fall in love with contradictions without understanding. I can't really portray them unless I do. So in a roundabout way I have to fall in love, it's my duty. If love is about understanding and understanding is compassion and compassion is love, I have to have compassion towards the world.
