They saved it for the end, so Rachel and I knew each other pretty well. In a sense we’d already been naked in that we’d been crying, shouting and kissing each other for weeks, but we finally did it on Christmas Eve, and let me put it this way: I didn’t eat any mince pies until Christmas Day. […] Terrible, isn’t it? Because you shouldn’t let vanity get in the way, but I did think ‘It would be nice to look great.’

It’s like being in a rugby team. We used to pull up our shirts with me saying ‘Look at the size of this bruise on my hip’ and then Chris Evans pulling down his trousers going, ‘Dude, you think that’s bad – look at my ass.’ The worst was I smashed my elbow during a tête-à-tête with Mark Ruffalo’s Incredible Hulk. It really hurt.

I don’t think Loki’s attitude to women is particularly healthy or tender. But the gold standard has to be honesty and psychological reality and naturalness and depth. Even if you’re playing this crazy, anarchic demon with a horned helmet, it still has to have a foundation in the truth

[…] with Tony, Chris, and me, he boiled it down to a father and two sons, the two brothers warring and competing for their father’s love, pride, and affection. It makes it very easy to play when you’ve got such a simple, human, relatable emotion. Which is why I want my dad to love me more than he loves my brother.

It’s one of the greatest journeys you can play – from wayward, wild, rebellious youth to compassionate, intelligent warrior poet, […] I’ve always dreamed of it.

All of Shakespeare’s best plays are about royal families shattering in pain. Lo and behold in the center of Thor you have the royal family of Asgard shattering in pain. Kenneth knew he wanted to create something spectacular and that the world of Asgard was going to be shatteringly beautiful.

I was never the clown at school, I had some really rebellious classmates when I was at school. I’ve always been quite internally rebellious. I think everybody at school thought I was going to become a teacher; it was a massive misjudgment of my character. Which maybe reflects that I never played all my cards, I kept them close to my chest. I guess that is somehow like Loki in some way. There is a distance. He is watching everything all the time from a distance. I guess I’m a bit like that.

Joss and I talked about the villains of human history. All the people in the course of the history of time who’ve tried to subjugate people, who’ve tried to get everyone else to bow down and kneel at their feet. And if you do any kind of amateur psychology on these guys , or not even amateur— books and books and books have been written on the fact that at rock bottom, they hate themselves.