I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.
Acting can be a very cruel mistress. It's not a meritocracy. In other walks of life, by being good at what you do, you can achieve success. That isn't always the case in this business. Every actor knows that.
I was born in Islington and grew up in Islington, so Arsenal was all around me, and supporting them was kind of unavoidable. The first season I started going to watch them was when we did the Double in 1971, so my first heroes were Charlie George, Ray Kennedy, and John Radford.
The person I respect most, in terms of historical figures, is probably Nelson Mandela. I just think that his tolerance in the face of extreme provocation is something every single person on the planet could learn from.
I loved English at school and realised I would enjoy studying plays. I got into Royal Holloway. They had a little studio theatre where we put on plays, and that's what I realised I wanted to do. So from there, I went to the Old Vic theatre school to learn how to do it properly.
My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behavior and what I thought was bad behavior and tailoring myself accordingly.
I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day.
I've pretty much played every regional accent you can play in the U.K. I've played German, French, Arabic; I've been Jordanian, Lebanese. I've covered a lot of ground.
When you're making a psychological thriller, what you need to do is have an audience on shifting sand so they're never quite sure where they are.
As an actor, that's what you want. You want variety. I want to try things that I'm not used to and push my own envelope and see what I'm capable of.
You do a play, or you go on set for the first day of filming: if you don't have nerves, and you don't have any kind of adrenalin pushing you forward, then something is wrong.
The fact that women are constantly supposed to be beautiful, gorgeous, and perfect all the time is something they have always had to live with. But now it's happening to men, too. There seems to be this imperative that you have to be hot or ripped or fit or healthy or whatever you want to call it.
When I decided to crop what was left of my hair, I thought, 'It's all over. I'm never going to work again: it's basket weaving me for me from now on.' But what actually happens is your casting changes: you suddenly start to get a lot of villains and coppers and soldiers and even the odd sensitive vicar - you become institutionalised.
I'm very organized and tidy in my home life and I generally do something myself rather than farm it out to somebody else. I don't have an assistant or anything because I think I can do it myself.
And I think in your 40s, you land a little bit, physically and mentally, you arrive at a place where you feel you've learned some stuff. Having children at that point meant I had something very useful to do for the next 20 years.
There have been things over the years that didn't work. 'Body Of Lies,' directed by Ridley Scott, which I did with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a really tight action thriller, but when it opened in the U.S. it was number two to 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.'
It's important to me that I don't spend too much time away from the family. I try to pick jobs that will keep me as close to home as possible or, if I have to go far away, for as little time as possible.
I did perform in punk bands, but it was more about shouting and snarling than about any beautiful music. I enjoyed singing in 'The Golden Circle' - I've never sung in a movie before.
The idea of transformation - playing something I'm not - is the bit I enjoy most about acting.
Listen - in life, if you can go into work and spend the day with Halle Berry, you're doing alright.
