Idris Elba

You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.

In 'Pacific Rim' I had to have a haircut I wouldn't usually rock. However, the moustache I had in the film - that might have to come out again. It was a good moustache. Good times.

Yeah, I know, any time you hear an actor say, 'I do music', you cringe. But I want to be gradual with my music. I want to earn my stripes.

I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.

There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character.

Whether it's music or acting, that creativity all comes from the same source.

If you go to Africa and you're white, you're probably not going to get that much work either. But the fact is that there is a longer history of black integration in the U.S. I don't have any resentment about this: I did the maths, calculated it against my ambition and decided to leave England.

Every leading lady I work with, I'll see if I can get a song out of them and put it on an album.

I'm not interested in making all-black films - I come from a very diverse culture; I want to work with every type of person. I work a lot with women executives because they seem to be a lot more open minded about that and a lot more progressive in that way.

There's a fast-track if you can do the networking. For some personalities it works, but for mine it doesn't.

When I look at my body of work, I've played a lot of characters who are morally conflicted - 'I'm right, no I'm wrong, I don't know what to do!' I want to play more characters who don't care as much, and who aren't as measured. They are what they are, no apologies.

I have one of these bodies. When I was younger, I could never put weight on, and now that I'm a little older, there's a natural sort of chubbiness coming. But honestly, if I work out for a week, it drops off in no time.