I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?'

There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it.

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?'

What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.

The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.

When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.

I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so.

I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.

'Ray Donovan' is very dark and very serious. As actors will tell you, the darker and more serious the material, the more jokes that go around set. It's a counterbalance.

Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.

Art is the job of the privileged.

As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.

As children, we all hold on to the myth of omnipotence. Comics are successful because kids identify with superheroes. They'll read a book or watch a TV programme and say, 'I'm that guy.' And that guy is always the one in control.

Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.

I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me.

I always think of Gilbert Norrell as being Salieri to Jonathan Strange being Mozart.

I come from a council estate in Tower Hamlets, and by no means am I the only person who has done well - one of my friends is head of year in a great school in Twickenham. Another is a writer; another is an artist, a musician.

I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.

I could not be one of those actors who stays in character all day long. I'd go mad.

I didn't do well at school, and I don't have lots of academic reference points.

I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.

I have my career and my family, and that's it.

I knew very early on that I wasn't Brad Pitt.

I knew what kind of actor I was going to be, and I looked for inspiration to people like Alec Guinness, Cyril Cusack, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent. I looked at them and thought, 'They play human beings as they really are.'

I know what I try to do. I try to be professional, turn up, not make too much fuss, do the job.

I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.

I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there.

I love the fact that everyone's trying to be good-looking in L.A. - then I turn up and I get work.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing.

I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film. I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film because I think it was a one-off before it was imitated a hundred times.

I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.

I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.

I wanted to work with Bryan Singer because I like his films.

I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.'

I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.

I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.

I wasn't that hard. I wasn't that tough. I wasn't that funny - I looked like me.

I wouldn't have been interested in making a show just about Hollywood, 'cause I find Hollywood boring. I find people and families very interesting.

I'd love to play a Bond villain. Yeah, I'd love to play a Bond villain. Everyone always says this to me; they always say, 'You've got to be a Bond villain', 'We're going to make you a Bond villain...' But they've never, ever approached me, I've never had a whiff of it. I think I'd love to play a Bond villain; I'd have great fun.

I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.

I'm like a mechanic. If you break down and phone the AA, they'll come to you whether it's raining or snowing. That's what an actor should do.

I'm not a great fiction reader. I love history. I love history and philosophy.

I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.

I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking.