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The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.
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'Evil' is quite a blanket term. People aren't the demonic characters we would like them to be sometimes.
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I always try to put myself in the way of surprise as much as possible. My ambition is to keep challenging myself. I like that journey of discovery.
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I love telling stories. I like the challenges presented to me on a daily basis. There's nothing resting about acting.
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I think the corruption of power is very interesting, and I think the idea that power is something that... You know, when people want power, they're a certain individual. When people acquire power by accident, they're different again.
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All my good friends are actors, really. It's different when you have a family, but they're still the people I meet most often. My best friend is Ian Hart, but then I've known him since I was five.
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The biggest difference between British TV and American TV is money. But what money doesn't do on American TV, which I thought it would, is buy you time. You don't get more time. You get more toys.
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I think I'm quite a lazy person, actually. If I'm not careful, I could just stay in bed all day.
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My house is very clean apart from a very small part of it that looks as if we've been burgled, which is my office.
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The great thing about being an actor is things happen to you very quickly. I like to put myself in the way of surprise.
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Nothing is my guiltiest pleasure. I love it. I love doing it. I love planning to do it, I love loafing and pottering and chilling and daydreaming.
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I'm not a perfectionist at all. I find perfectionists boring because the real creative heart is in the mess somewhere.
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It takes a long time to drag myself out of bed, and at night I'm buzzing. As a young man it was helpful, but now I'd like to be tired when I go to bed and alive in the morning.
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Savannah is amazing with the town squares and the hanging moss and the French Colonial houses. It's brutally romantic.
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As a director, your work is finished only when it's on the screen. But I will always be an actor who occasionally directs. And no, I have no interest in directing myself. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on both jobs at once.
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I think when you don't know where you stand with someone, they can surprise you in their goodness and their badness, and that makes them human.
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I owe my mum a sense of family. She has kept our family together. I have two brothers and a sister, and they all live a stone's throw away from each other in Liverpool.
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I'd really like to get on a Greyhound bus and go backpacking across America.
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It's always good to find out what you don't want to do.
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I love getting stuff, and if I give a present to someone and don't get one back, you can bet your life they won't be getting one next year.
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I'm no good at down-time. I panic slightly and then plan a project or set up a meeting about starting a project.
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Liverpool has always made me brave, choice-wise. It was never a city that criticised anyone for taking a chance.
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Liverpool will always be my home.
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I'm the youngest of four kids. There's something in me that will always be the youngest child, will always look up to people when they don't necessarily need it.