I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

I wondered how they would top the Pirates and skeletons and moonlight, because that's a pretty cool concept.

I'm amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I'm so lucky, though my mum always says, 'You make your own luck.'

I'm still at the beginning of my career. It's all a little new, and I'm still learning as I go.

I've done movies with a sword before. But I haven't really been given the full responsibility of something like a Ridley Scott film.

If life isn't about human beings and living in harmony, then I don't know what it's about.

Movies like that aren't about the visual effects and explosions. They're human stories about family, about life, about death.

Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

Someone tried to save my soul in a gas station.

The process of making a movie is what I love. I thrive on that. It's an exciting miracle, a mad adventure. I love being part of it.

The role of an actor is to make every character believable.

There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

You don't improvise with a Cameron Crowe script.

I'm so happy to have been a part of that process and I would go straight back into the desert in a ton of chain mail for Ridley any day of the week. He's an amazing director and I can't wait to see the long version.

A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.

Although it is a fantasy film, it's as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth.

I came back out here from England and I was there for a while and it was beautiful and it is just great to see London going from Spring to Summer and Autumn.

I got to work with one of my heroes, Johnny Depp, and to see how he goes about business, which was really inspiring for me at this stage in my career.

I had the training at drama school where I studied Shakespeare and Brecht and Chekov and all these period historical playwrights and I think that I responded to the material.

I remember one time that I was filming a scene in whych my character rides through Troy on a chariot. I just looked around at this incredible set thinking 'This is the life'.