If you're an up-and-coming star, and you want to do well, then a show like 'The X Factor' is really important.

The most influential person in my life had been George Michael. He was very important to me and was one of my musical heroes growing up. Then he became a friend and mentor and someone I'd lean on.

As a working-class boy, golf was never really on my radar, and when I was growing up, Irish football was my sporting passion.

You're just one of the guys who fills a suit, and that's what's drilled into you by the record company and the management - 'You're lucky to have it. Now shut your mouth.' I get where that comes from, but it takes time to shake it off.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.

At the time I perceived most religious men, particularly the pastors with all their talk about love, faith and relationship, as effeminate.

I approach these people from a standpoint of love. How were they loved? How do they love? What's going on in their heart? There's that that I think about with every role.