To me, he's a hero, ... He's not polite. He's not someone you want to take home to meet your mother, necessarily. This is a guy in search of truth. Incidentally, that truth one day could save your life or the life of someone you love. That's a heroic thing.

They, all of them, work incredibly hard to make me seem clever and heroic, neither of which I am.

People assume that I'm very highly trained, that I studied and did years and years of Shakespeare. I have no training whatsoever and I've only done one Shakespeare play at university. If people want to believe that, I'm happy to go along with it.

He was a very gentle soul and, I think, a very good doctor. And I'm probably being paid more to become a fake version of my own father.

I am terribly conscious of the fact that the world doesn't need any more actors. There are so many brilliant actors around that one more twit like me joining the back of the queue seems completely unnecessary.

I never went to drama school, I don't have any certificates saying: 'He's a qualified actor.' But I did think that 'House' was something I didn't have to apologise for. It was something I was really proud of and it was sort of... whether you liked it or not, it was undeniable.