Originally, I thought, 'Gollum's such a fantastic character, why are you doing him CG? Surely you need to be able to humanise him as much as possible - he's so full of pathos and real emotion.'

Everybody thinks performance capture is about thrashing around and doing a lots of movement, but it's actually about being able to contain and think and be believed in a close-up, as much as anything else.

You never really know why you become an actor: it's a visceral thing, an emotional thing.

I think he (director, Peter Jackson) was originally going to have Kong kill Lumpy. Instead he gave me a role who finally gets devoured by computer graphics ? I don't know whether that is a comment or not.

I enjoy high-speed about-turns in thought.

I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.