I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.
In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.
I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.
It's constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing to do.
I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.
I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.
Why do you think so many actors are only half-developed people? It's very easy when you're a young actor to have these intense, explosive friendships for short periods of time, because you can control what's shown of you. Then you go on to your next job and reinvent yourself again. I think it's important to find something constant.
I'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.
I'm a slow starter.
I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.
It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.
I found the hedge-fund guys I met all to be very, very concentrated listeners - watchful and articulate and quick to defend, if needed. They all seemed to have this contained sitting posture. The legs, if they weren't crossed at right angles, tended to be close over the knee, their hands put together.
The irony is that, coming from a white-collar British background, I tend to play blue-collar Americans!