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" The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting. "

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" 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. "

" You do a play, or you go on set for the first day of filming: if you don't have nerves, and you don't have any kind of adrenalin pushing you forward, then something is wrong. "

" 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. "

" I do get antsy if I haven't got lines to learn, a character to play. But yes, I do take holidays. "

" I studied law, so perhaps I might have made it to the Bar, though I gave up that idea when I suspected playing a barrister was probably much more fun than being one. "

" 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 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. "

" When I talk to younger actors, and young people in general, who are holding off having children because they think they cannot fit them into their busy lives, I now know, and am able to say to them, 'You've just got to get on with it; there is never going to be a right time.' "

" I'm going to try to play some good guys for a while and just see how that is. It's hard to enjoy them as much as the bad guys, and the clothes are nowhere near as good. Good guys don't wear nice suits! "

" You sign for a sequel for everything these days, just in case, options. In the past, you avoided them like the plague because it meant somewhere down the road you couldn't take a job because you had to do a sequel. Now it's a feature of pretty much any feature you do. "

" 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. "

" Some jobs you do, they're just jobs. Others are life experiences. "

" 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.' "

" I have to say, when you make a movie, you really have no idea how it's going to turn out as an actor. The important bit for an actor is the actual shooting of it because the minute the shoot ends, it's got nothing to do with you anymore. "

" And I think in your 40s, you land a little bit, physically and mentally, you arrive at a place where you feel you've learned some stuff. Having children at that point meant I had something very useful to do for the next 20 years. "

" 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. "

" I'm very organized and tidy in my home life and I generally do something myself rather than farm it out to somebody else. I don't have an assistant or anything because I think I can do it myself. "

" My genes are such that I've always been relatively in shape. "

" I love all those dark, twisty shows, but my favorite show at the moment is 'Girls.' I love watching it. I've forgot how self-absorbed you can be at 21 years old or whatever. "

" It's great to have the chance to play a character before he goes to the dark side, or the yellow side if you will. Normally, you don't get that opportunity. The narrative of a movie usually demands that you are that guy from the start. "

" When you're making a psychological thriller, what you need to do is have an audience on shifting sand so they're never quite sure where they are. "

" 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. "

" In the past, if I didn't work, I didn't eat but now I feel I can not work and I won't starve. "

" The fact that women are constantly supposed to be beautiful, gorgeous, and perfect all the time is something they have always had to live with. But now it's happening to men, too. There seems to be this imperative that you have to be hot or ripped or fit or healthy or whatever you want to call it. "