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Being the youngest makes you long for more of a voice. You find that voice early in theatrics of the kitchen. I was the one screaming, 'Hey, where is my food?'.

I was in this guy's office in LA two years ago and he said: 'Love your work, Joe, love your work.' I'm thinking, wow, he came all the way to catch me as Christ in Son of Man at the Barbican. I asked what he'd seen me in and he replied: 'Nothing' - without a flicker of irony. I thought, OK, that's how it works.

I withdrew after Shakespeare in Love (1998) and went back to the theater, to what I know. I went back to what my initial voice was, which was to find a range and freedom and a creative energy. If that meant not following up with a typical leading-man role, then that's what it is. I'm an actor, and whatever speaks to me I will do.

I've always believed that you shouldn't want to mend a broken heart, because that's someone you don't want to forget. Scars can be good.

It takes years to establish yourself, and then you have one big film and everyone calls you an overnight success. You think, 'Christ, I've been sweating and crying for seven years.'

It's weird. I never hid adolescence. I kind of bypassed it, and I'm a bit angry that I didn't go through all the angst. I had the acne but no angst. From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of a Rough Gang - we went around and terrorised all the pupils in school. I was this really nasty kid, and then overnight I turned into the man I am now.

I don't read reviews. I can always spot an actor who's read his reviews, because if they're good, he's swaying about the stage, and if they're bad, he's changed his performance. He comes in limping or something.

For a lot of British actors, the theatre is home. It's what they did before you knew them, as it were.

I'm a believer, however naively, that someone will place me in a project because they've seen my work, rather than me being bullish or so ambitious that I get the part by any other means.

What's that Russian saying? 'How do you make God Laugh? - Tell him your plans.' It's kind of true.

"But it's a strange thing when people judge you because you're not doing some big Hollywood film. Are you suggesting I should be in Ein Duke kommt selten allein (1979)? I mean, hello?".

"Well, that's his journey. I know that I might have only got Shakespeare in Love (1998) because someone else turned it down; it's a very small marketplace. So it would feel weird to say, 'Oh, yeah I could have been there on Oscar night', because the whole chemistry of the film is built around that particular actor. Who knows if it would have had the same effect with a different cast. It's a mercurial world of alchemy" [on turning down Adrien Brody's role in Der Pianist (2002) which garnered the actor an Oscar].

Who has gone through their lives without those ups and downs, whether they are a journalist or an actor or a painter or an accountant? There are always going to be times when it doesn't flow as much as you were hoping. So of course I'm going to fail. And when I do fail I hope I fail better and better, again and again. I am happy to fail.

Give me a sword fight any day.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.

I never went into acting to do film. I went into it to do theatre - classical roles.

I love travelling. I love cultures