There was a year between school and getting going as an actor when I basically just watched films. Video shops were the new thing, and there was a good one round the corner and me and my brother just watched everything, from the horror to the European art-house.

To start, I wasn't really interested in acting at all, and I didn't make much impact. The first play I was in was on for five nights and I didn't show up for two of them and nobody noticed. But I stayed because that's where my friends were, and after a while I found myself wanting to inhabit other people's worlds and lives.

Every couple of years - no, that's every couple of weeks - I think I'm going to give up acting.

For me, now, working and children is it. There's nothing more to life.

I can read people, and if the other person doesn't want to say anything, I'm fine with that. People say things when it's time to say them.

I didn't want to go to college or work in an office or have a nine-to-five job. I knew that quite clearly before I left school.

I do consider how I spend my time off carefully because I've got two kids.

I don't do a lot of reflecting. I'm usually about getting on with it.

I find still photographs make me quite self-conscious.

I hate it when people tell you you're good when you know that you're not.

I have been in control of what I've been doing, of the career I've put together.

I heat myself up over the fact that I am never going to be as good as I want to be.

I like the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I've liked what I've experienced of Glasgow's Film Festival too.

I'd quite like to do a musical. I'd probably have to develop that myself.

I'm always attracted to bold, risk-taking scripts.

It's always a good idea to let the audience make up their own minds.

People say 'The Wire''s bleak, y'know, but I see it as a love letter to Baltimore, and it's one written in a very strange and complex way.

Both 'The Wire' and 'Queer as Folk' had a big scope. They were panoramas, telling ambitious stories about two cities, Baltimore and Manchester, for the first time.

'Heroes', 'Desperate Housewives', 'The Sopranos' - they're all very stylised. 'The Wire' is much more rooted in realism and honesty. In American television, I can't think of anything I'd rather have been in because it has got something to say and that is the kind of thing I want to do.

I do what I can, but I'll always give it a shot. You're not going to see me playing a Welsh character any time soon, not because I wouldn't love to. I went up to Wales once and read for a film with Rhys Ifans, and haven't been asked back since. We did have a nice time on the train on the way back.