When I was offered the part in Shakespeare In Love a voice in my head said ‘not another tights role!

The danger is that people become too familiar. There should be a distance, and it’s hard to negotiate that. The more success, the more press. And when I say familiar, I mean the audience becoming too familiar with me in a kind of role, with my face, with my life story. I want to see a character on the screen, not the personality of the actor. So I need to keep a distance.

Being the youngest makes you long for more of a voice. You find that voice early in theatrics of the kitchen. I was the one screaming, ‘Hey, where is my food?’.

I still listen to that inner voice, it means that I never make the obvious choice. I’m not ruled by the neurosis of the business – I’m ruled by my beliefs and passions thanks to my parents, from whom I’ve got this image of pillars of strength and wisdom.

Yes, I enjoy studying philosophy. If there is a voice other than the dogmas, it is Krishnamurti’s voice. I have a great respect and admiration for him. I have also studied Tibetan Buddhism, but only out of curiosity and to get information. I do not follow or practise any religion, philosophy or dogma.

There is life outside Madame Tussauds [on advice to tourists]

I know more about the characters I play. That’s awful, isn’t it? I seem to be able to invest more time in dissecting others’ thoughts and motivations than in looking at my own. But maybe, in doing that, I can reveal parts of myself.

I think what I discovered from an early age was the joy of the written word. I just found that life enhancing, that you could hold hands with poets from different centuries, different ages, different backgrounds, and they would take you places that you never really knew or understood existed.

I was in this guy’s office in LA two years ago and he said: ‘Love your work, Joe, love your work.’ I’m thinking, wow, he came all the way to catch me as Christ in Son of Man at the Barbican. I asked what he’d seen me in and he replied: ‘Nothing’ – without a flicker of irony. I thought, OK, that’s how it works.

I’m completely grounded within myself. I find the infringement of so-called stardom grotesque. It’s something I never bargained for.

Always put the gun in the other man’s hand [on his life philosophy]

I withdrew after Shakespeare in Love (1998) and went back to the theater, to what I know. I went back to what my initial voice was, which was to find a range and freedom and a creative energy. If that meant not following up with a typical leading-man role, then that’s what it is. I’m an actor, and whatever speaks to me I will do.

If my agent told me something was ‘damaging’, I would almost certainly do it just to spite him anyway.

I am not very good at shaving, and always have lazy stubble.

I like a woman to be at ease in whatever she’s wearing. I like a woman to feel sexy. You pick up the presence of someone who is very happy with herself and what she’s wearing. It’s not so much the clothing. Heels? I love heels. It’s not a fetish, but there is something very sexy about them.

I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t want to mend a broken heart, because that’s someone you don’t want to forget. Scars can be good.

Heart-throb? Not at all, not at all. If I had enough influence, I’d keep myself well away from all that and just do what I love, which is the work. There’s a danger of the work being overwhelmed if you get too much attention when you’re still new.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

It takes years to establish yourself, and then you have one big film and everyone calls you an overnight success. You think, ‘Christ, I’ve been sweating and crying for seven years.’

I have a huge respect for this process, for publicity, for its potential and its actual impact. You respect it because it is so grotesquely powerful. It can penetrate far into people’s lives, readers’ lives, or the subject’s life – it spreads all around the world. And its power is such that it can overwhelm you. There are certain areas that I keep private. I don’t talk about my political beliefs or my personal life and I don’t use interviews as counselling. I don’t work out my problems or feelings in public, because whenever I read an article where somebody does that, I find it excruciating.

I don’t know what my limitations are until I reach them. I look for the challenge.

Hidden in every young individual, there’s creative potential – it’s up to us to nurture it. Support the young and they will be part of a process that will have a knock-on effect for generations to come. I think that’s unique and special.

When I’m on stage, I feel that I’m with my family. I feel that’s my purpose in life and I know who I am to a degree.

It’s weird. I never had adolescence. I kind of bypassed it, and I’m a bit angry that I didn’t go through all the angst. I had the acne but no angst. From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of a rough gang – we went around and terrorised all the pupils in school. I was this really nasty kid, and then overnight I turned into the man I am now.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can’t wait to get on to the later stuff.

I don’t read reviews. I can always spot an actor who’s read his reviews, because if they’re good, he’s swaying about the stage, and if they’re bad, he’s changed his performance. He comes in limping or something.

I love to explore other countries, and that all on my own. Loneliness is a essential part of my desire to travel. There lies great freedom in it.

And now that I have lots of nieces and nephews, I’ve become Uncle Joe, who does all the party tricks. So no time for shop [talk] for me, I have to do hand tricks with coins, make things disappear, and things like that. And to tell you the truth, I love doing that. It’s great when you can fool a two year old!

I’d like to be a passion fruit. Not because it’s passionate, but because someone I know is mad about them and has got me onto them.

I’d love to do a play where the people in the front row don’t mumble all the monologues under their breath while you’re playing it… maybe we should ban Shakespeare for five years so people forget what it’s about.

For a lot of British actors, the theatre is home. It’s what they did before you knew them, as it were.

I’ve got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.

I’m a believer, however naively, that someone will place me in a project because they’ve seen my work, rather than me being bullish or so ambitious that I get the part by any other means.

I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth is through fantasy.

I don’t go for a particular look in a girl – I just wait for their spirit to connect with mine. There’s a voice that speaks to me, that rings out from her soul to mine. I know that sounds really hippyish but it’s true.

What’s that Russian saying? ‘How do you make God Laugh? – Tell him your plans.’ It’s kind of true.

We were basically naked when we were in bed together and I was sort of like a little teenage girl going ‘I don’t want to take off my clothes.’ She just sort of calmed me down. But I am definiyely shy. I’ll take a sword fight any day. [on how uncomfortable he was when filming the love scenes for Shakespeare in Love]

But it’s a strange thing when people judge you because you’re not doing some big Hollywood film. Are you suggesting I should be in The Dukes of Hazzard? I mean, hello?

[How does that affect his relationships?] It puts a stress on relationships, not just with partners but with mates. … I wouldn’t tell you if I was, so I could be lying. After all, I am an actor …

I don’t tend to hang out much with other actors, and the ones I do get together with don’t tend to be the telly-out-the-window types. The extent of my bad behaviour stretches to eating a few grapes in the supermarket when I’m doing my shopping. It’d be kinda difficult to make a good headline out of that, so I’ll have to start getting a little reckless really. Maybe I should get some lessons from Oliver Reed.

Well, that’s his journey. I know that I might have only got Shakespeare in Love because someone else turned it down; it’s a very small marketplace. So it would feel weird to say, ‘Oh, yeah I could have been there on Oscar night’, because the whole chemistry of the film is built around that particular actor. Who knows if it would have had the same effect with a different cast. It’s a mercurial world of alchemy. [on turning down Adrian Brody's role in The Pianist which garnered the actor an Oscar]

I think villains are generally misunderstood. They are a kind of bruised romantics.

Who has gone through their lives without those ups and downs, whether they are a journalist or an actor or a painter or an accountant? There are always going to be times when it doesn’t flow as much as you were hoping. So of course I’m going to fail. And when I do fail I hope I fail better and better, again and again. I am happy to fail.

I was a real horror as a child… I’d beat up my sister, until one day she hit back and that was a real shock. I sort of side-stepped adolescence after that.