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I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.

It's something that I think I'm going to have to fight against for most of my career, for people to take me seriously as an actor as opposed to a good-looking guy. It's not what I want to be known as.

I've done a lot of period dramas, but I love modern productions, too.

You fight for certain roles, and you realise they're being filled by television and film actors, because theatre is constantly fighting for survival and they need names and faces and ticket sales.

I recently did a play, Athol Fugard's 'Coming Home' at Long Wharf Theatre, where I played one character throughout - I sat at a table and didn't have any costume changes. Following one character's arc from beginning to end is a whole different mindset.

I have changed so much as an actor over the years.

I've done a lot of costume drama and theatre - the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period.

You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress.

The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.