In the early part of your career you are always compared with somebody until you can stand on your own two feet.

It could be my downfall, but I don't think it is - Hollywood is run on perception, and if you stray off the path of what you want to do with your career, it's suicide.

It's generally more fun playing the villain.

I'm happy being an actor, it's what I have always wanted to do. I'm just lucky I got to do it so early.

I bought a house, and I've been decorating it.

So I try not to do press and if you can keep the balance of keeping a certain degree of anonymity and do interesting work then you can hope for a degree of career longevity.

I'm reading scripts, desperately wanting to work. I've set a couple of things up for next year.

Good roles are hard to come by, and whether they're a few lines or a lead, you snap 'em up when they come along.

In the early part of your career you are always compared with somebody until you can stand on your own two feet.

And I just want to work with good directors and good people.

No, I do a bunch of things to entertain myself. I paint, I make music, I take photographs.

If I went to them all dressed up and flashed a nice smile for the cameras it would probably be easier for me to get work. But I just can't tolerate it.

I get invited to literally every single movie premiere that's going on.

I watch these actors who when you go to buy a pint of milk you see them smiling on the cover of 20 magazines. Then when you see them in a film it's hard to believe the character because you just see them everywhere.

If I'd seen a grown man beating a crippled boy, of course I'd intervene. If my father died and left my mother destitute, it's your instinct to take care of her. So when I started to think about it in those terms, it started to make sense to me.

I find aspects of the industry tedious and hard to manage.

In a work capacity I'm only interested in acting and producing.

I love hip hop music, I make hip hop music.

The truth of the matter is the real industry is in LA and the cream of the talent is there.

There are definitely worse people to be compared with. I think Brad Pitt makes interesting decisions.

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.

I'm currently doing Undeclared an American TV show set in a college. It just got aired and got massive ratings so hopefully that'll screen in the UK soon.

A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters - well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality - but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage.

After all the work I've done, I feel like I'm something of an emotion-smith. We have to tap into places on a daily basis that usually people only go in a rare occasion.

Back when I was a kid, I used to tear pages out of magazines and stick them on my bedroom wall - I had the Eternity ads on my wall and the CK One ads. My whole childhood, those were on my wall, and cut to 20 years later, being asked to be the face of one of Calvin Klein's new fragrances is kind of surreal.

Being at the mercy of the acting profession, in the early days of one's career, is really brutal and feels like you have no control over your life, at all.

English people are always surprised I'm English.

Everybody, at some point in their life, has fallen down and not felt like getting back up, but you have to, no matter how difficult it is.

Good-quality travel and good-quality food are the two luxuries that I never have any guilt indulging in.

I always think it's better to take a smaller role in a great film rather than a leading role in something that you don't have complete faith in.

I always think that the ability to fight and defend oneself is a skill that every man should have but endeavour never to use, you know?

I do try not to dwell on the past too much, because I have a tendency to do that, and as I've gotten older, I've gotten very good at distancing myself from shoulda, woulda, coulda.

I don't think I even have a clear perspective of how I'm depicted in the media.

I go into the gym and do 75 pullups, 75 dips, 150 squats, 150 pushups, and then 20 minutes of ab work. Done. It takes an hour; I'm in and out. I sweat the whole time.

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.

I realise few people get to live the life they always wanted, but I'm so neurotic, I don't really think about it. I'm too busy thinking, 'I hope I don't screw up my next scene.'

I really, really pride myself on being a professional and a man of keeping my word. It means a lot to me, truly.

I ride the same bike that I rode on 'Sons,' a Harley Dyna Super Glide. You know, I wish I wasn't the guy who rode the same bike he rode on his show, but the problem is there's no better bike out there.

I tend to go to bed really early on New Year's Eve. Then I wake up early, drive up while it's still dark, and hike out somewhere beautiful to watch the sunrise. I just take a couple hours and have a post-mortem of the year.

I think world creation and monster creation and all of that stuff is exciting as a secondary element of storytelling. When it becomes more important than storytelling, I get very nervous, and you sort of lose me a little bit.

I think, most of the time, fame is just an inconvenience that needs to be negotiated around to get done what you're actually trying to do.

I was a slightly melancholy child and I think films were a way of escaping for me.

I was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, 'What am I doing? This isn't who I am, as a man or an artist.' I had to overcome people's belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.

I'm pretty mercurial and a very difficult, long-winded decision-maker at the best of times.

I'm starting to get old. I want to eat some hamburgers and just relax.

My favorite days are at home. Spend some time in the garden, cook a couple of nice meals, watch a couple of movies. I'm pretty boring.

Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didn't read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world.

Since I was young, I've been aware that I need time to myself to process everything.

There's a tendency in this Hollywood machinery to take on too much. You end up not being able to give everything you want.