Actor

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards.

I usually can find a way to do a character to make it real and work. But sometimes it's a struggle sustaining that, because there's such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness.

I like working on things that are very different and that involve different disguises.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

Nowadays people don't know how to handle it if all the ends aren't tied up and they're not told what to think in films. And if they're challenged, they think it's something wrong with the film.

I'm not a fan of Twitter.

I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte.

Sometimes people get really sniffy about the films you choose if you've done more dramatic projects or you're classically trained.

In my first year at drama school, I did this kids' show called 'Let's See.'

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

When there's an adult person who's scaring you, you grow up pretty quickly.

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

'Macbeth' was the first play I ever read. In fact, I remember my brother Tom, who is six years older than me, coming home from school and telling me about it. He was the one that really got me going.

I don't feel I'm a compulsive person. I multitask. I'm really well-organised, and I have lots of people to help me.

I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.