As a child, I had a deck of Marvel top trumps. You can get top trumps with racing cars, or fighter planes, or football players... I had all of the Marvel superheroes and super-villains you could get, and I used to play them with my friends. They were all listed according to their height and weight and agility and their super-powers.
Daniel Day-Lewis is particularly a sort of beacon I've been following for some time. For God's sake, I'm not even in his league but he inspires me because he's not interested in playing himself; he's only interested in playing other people and the whole thing is like an adventure for him, it seems to me. It's some kind of spiritual exploration, which is an amazing, noble thing.
I'm sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you've done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you're always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought.
I have been allowed to inhabit different shades of human nature and different colours of truth indifferent circumstances.
Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorising them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.
Whenever I come back to London, which is home, I get that cosy, comfortable feeling of being home, as well as the sophistication of this city.
I did a production of 'Journey's End,' an RC Sherriff play about World War I, at the Edinburgh Festival. I was 18 and it was the first time that people I knew and loved and respected came up to me after the show and said, 'You know, you could really do this if you wanted to.'
The character, as written on the page, is just a blueprint for a human being.
Loki in 'Thor' is the most incredible springboard into a sort of excavation of the darker aspects of human nature. So that was thrilling, coming back knowing that I'd built the boat and now I could set sail into choppier waters.
I find that, when I'm working, if I start the day with a run - outside, not in a gym, but just me out there in the elements, with only my own legs to propel me forward... It's something to do with just being in the world and getting out of my own head.
It sounds cliched, but superheroes can be lonely, vain, arrogant and proud. Often they overcome these human frailties for the greater good.
What I learned in Guinea is that we are all responsible for the state of our world. The world - and the system by which we trade, share, cooperate and conflict - is clearly not working. We are only as strong as our weakest members. UNICEF is run at every level by strong, relentlessly energetic, deeply capable people who use that strength, energy and capability to help those who need it most: the weakest, most disadvantaged women and children of our world. All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now.
When people don't like themselves very much, they have to make up for it. The classic bully was actually a victim first.
I am so profoundly aware of my lack of skill to make any material difference. I am not a doctor. I can't influence foreign policy. I can't build schools. I can't chemically engineer the protein paste that helps people with acute malnutrition. But I can talk about it, and so can you.
I'd love to see T'he Avengers' with Robert Downey, Jr. playing Loki and Clark Gregg playing 'Thor' and I play Captain America.
People love escapism and there should be a place for it.
Somehow the past is a safe place to explore our collective cultural neuroses.
Vietnam is absolutely breathtaking. I've never been to that part of the world before and it is an area of such natural beauty.
Everywhere there is inequality, everywhere there is division, and I worry about it. I think everybody does.
The thing about running is, if I run in the morning before work, I feel like I'm ahead of the day. Whatever work I've done in terms of preparation or research or thinking about the scene or the character, it all kind of crystallizes in that moment in the morning. And sometimes I have the best ideas then.
My instinct is to keep people guessing. I think as an actor your greatest strength is your versatility, I suppose. The blanker the canvas, the easier it is to project the illusion of a character onto it. I think there are many actors who do that very successfully.
The 60s had completely changed how people conceived of their lives and their habits and their identities.
I've always loved King Kong. He's like a modern-day myth, an icon of the cinema.
Honestly, I’m happiest when I’m with my best friend and we’re just laughing about life and times, there is nothing greater than friendship in this world. And that kind of sort of mutual acceptance ; to feel known and understood by people and to feel like you know and understand them back is all you can ask for.
I truly think any preparation you do only helps and adds dimension and complexity to the work [as an actor].
