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I've always played characters that were younger than myself.

I became an actor when I was 22.

I've always thought like I'm really a 3-feet-high comic trapped in a leading man's body... but then I played Nicholas Nickleby, and suddenly I was heroic.

I was very young when I became an actor: I was 19 years old.

I was 40 when I did my first movie.

I played old men back in drama school. It's just now that I'm drawing level with the age of the characters I play, but I'm fine with that, and I've certainly never envied people who became hugely famous when they were young.

I was studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, and I was playing the role of Dr. Ivan Chebutikin in Chekov's 'Three Sisters.' I was about 50 years too young for the part.

I was 10, and I played Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island' at school, and this great Liverpudlian actor called Andrew Schofield - he was Johnny Rotten in 'Sid And Nancy' - came to watch it, and he had a word with my mum and dad afterwards and told them I should have a go at the Everyman youth theatre. I've never looked back.