[Loki] has an unlimited supply of throwing daggers. I’ve always felt like Loki doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so rather than punch you in the face, he’ll just stick a dagger in your jugular. Make it quick, efficient, and lethal.

The experience of playing [Prince Hal/King Henry V] is one that changes you permanently […] The intelligence, compassion and wisdom in the writing pulls you in. You carry it with you until you die.

What’s my guilty pleasure? The thing is I never feel guilty about pleasures.

What’s great about the two characters is that they’re both enormously gifted. Thor is powerful and noble and strong, physically athletic and the leader of the pack and Loki is fiercely intelligent, he’s a strategist and a master of magic, so the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. But going up against each other is a whole other thing.

Here’s the thing a wise man once said, ‘The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference.’ And Loki is not indifferent to Thor. He hates him. And in order to hate someone, you must still, therefore, love them. So I think there is, somewhere down the line, the possibility of redemption for him, because he is just in real need of self-esteem.

I was really quite upset, and probably very sad and vulnerable and angry. Acting presented a way of expelling those feelings in a safe place.

Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. They sky’s the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let’s dance.

I think if you’re going to be conventionally romantic you’ve got to go all the way: a beautiful dinner somewhere lovely, with boat-loads of flowers, chocolates and champagne. But it might also be nice to wrap up warm and sit on a roof somewhere, with a cup of hot soup and your girl, watch the planes come in over London and listen to the night.

You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don’t love themselves enough.