I did perform in punk bands, but it was more about shouting and snarling than about any beautiful music. I enjoyed singing in 'The Golden Circle' - I've never sung in a movie before.
I had fantasies of being a European lawyer, but I quickly realised I probably just had fantasies of wearing a raincoat and carrying a briefcase and driving a BMW. I thought that would be cool.
There's an honourable tradition of British actors who've gone to Hollywood playing baddies. Part of that is because we grow up with Richard III and Macbeth - we're not afraid of our villains.
There have been things over the years that didn't work. 'Body Of Lies,' directed by Ridley Scott, which I did with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a really tight action thriller, but when it opened in the U.S. it was number two to 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.'
I'm like anyone; I make a lot of my assumptions about actors I don't know from what I read about them. And then I'll find those judgments are often completely confounded when I meet them in real life.
If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood.
Funnily enough, I had a real giggle with Gary Oldman when we were doing an interview together for 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.' Because I joked I was probably the only British actor who wasn't in the 'Harry Potter' franchise. The same is true of 'Game of Thrones.' Also 'Star Wars.'
My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behavior and what I thought was bad behavior and tailoring myself accordingly.
Listen - in life, if you can go into work and spend the day with Halle Berry, you're doing alright.
I was born in London, and my family is here. America is an interesting place, but it's incredibly different culturally. It doesn't take long being there before I want to get back.
I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.
All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.
I've pretty much played every regional accent you can play in the U.K. I've played German, French, Arabic; I've been Jordanian, Lebanese. I've covered a lot of ground.
The person I respect most, in terms of historical figures, is probably Nelson Mandela. I just think that his tolerance in the face of extreme provocation is something every single person on the planet could learn from.
I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day.
I'm sure, in real life, spying is boring - there's probably a lot of sitting around and plenty of paperwork. But the world seems to think that spying is exciting, and that's how movies get made.
When I decided to crop what was left of my hair, I thought, 'It's all over. I'm never going to work again: it's basket weaving me for me from now on.' But what actually happens is your casting changes: you suddenly start to get a lot of villains and coppers and soldiers and even the odd sensitive vicar - you become institutionalised.
