I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.

Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.

Ultimately it's a leap of faith and a leap of imagination to put yourself back in time into those conditions and situations and see how you would react.

When we were filming 'The Darkest Hour,' we didn't even know what the aliens were going to look like, we didn't even have a graphic reference. So it was definitely a big challenge to sell those kind of extreme moments when you're just generating them from your own imagination.

I believe that imagination inspires nations. It's something that I live by.