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I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are.

You can't form a character without being completely comfortable with who you are as a person.

I do not want to play a character who is exactly like me.

You have to like the characters you play.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.

With writing fiction, I'm either not courageous enough or just not suited for telling truths in a more conventional way. As an actor, I inhabit those characters as I'm writing them.

In the film world, we can all be heroes. In the real world, where heroism can cost you your life or the life of the ones you love, people aren't so willing to make those sacrifices. When they do, they are set apart from the rest of us.

A lot of the characters I've played before are heroic or invincible in some ways and not tuned into fear and anxiety and pain.