Quotes
  • What’s important to me is the longevity. I want to create a body of work that is entertaining and speaks to people for a long time. Longer than my life span. They’re the real goals for me as an actor, not the fame side of things.
  • [on his acting influences] Growing up, Gary Oldman has been a big role model of mine. Also Tim Roth, I’ve always loved his performances. A more recent example would be Tom Hardy. He decides to do what he does for his reasons, but I like the way he’s been able to stay as Tom. He’s not been warped in any way.
  • [on playing Cook in Skins (2007)] I think out of the characters I’ve played, me and Cook are the most similar. I don’t know whether he changed me; he helped keep me on the straight and narrow for a bit, ironically, because I could focus any troublesome incentives of mine into a very productive line of work. If he changed me, it was for the better… There is a significant amount [of fan mail], and it comes from all over the world; it’s so humbling to know that Skins (2007) reached out on a global scale, from something we were just fucking around with in Bristol.
  • If I’m among my boys or people I’ve grown up with, I can be immature.
  • I need to mature a bit – then I might have something to show for it.
  • I quite like to sing, actually – just belting out numbers with my guitar. I find that it’s a form of tranquility.
  • I worked on a farm for a little bit.
  • I want to create a body of work that is entertaining and speaks to people for a long time. Longer than my life span.
  • I find the education I got from living in Derby and being streetwise and knowing the people that I know, the lessons that I had to learn growing up, have set me in good stead for this kind of working life.
  • I like the ideology of there being no such thing as perfection. But I’m of the opinion that I have witnessed perfection at various times, especially in art.
  • I’d be lying if I said I never think about my female fans in certain shots and certain scenes. Like, when I’m topless, I might think: ‘This one is for the ladies.’
  • Since I started acting, I’ve always been aware of the sort of ‘beastly entity’ that is America and Hollywood, and semi-consciously, I devised a kind of route in – I’d seen a lot of people try and fail.
  • I feel like I’ve grown up on screen quite a lot.
  • I’m actually a hippy in real life. I had three dreadlocks on the back of my head once. They were spawning.
  • I feel like I’ve grown up on screen quite a lot.
  • I wanted to join the Army when football failed. That was my only realistic form of making an honest living.
  • I’ve had the good fortune of studying the 17th-century art of Amsterdam in preparation for a film.
  • My first experience on a feature film was with Shane Meadows on ‘This Is England.’
  • I was a youngster looking up to dudes like Vicky McClure, Joe Dempsie and Michael Socha – in fact, he was a big influence on how I was able to detach drama from the all-singing, all-dancing stigma.