“I certainly wouldn’t watch number three, I wouldn’t watch the first two, I wouldn’t watch four,” he says, ticking off each of the installments. “I might watch five.” He pauses. “I definitely wouldn’t watch six.”

“The thing I learned, much more than learning about acting, was learning about on-set etiquette,” he says. “As a lead actor on a film you have a tremendous opportunity to influence the entire process by virtue of the attitude you take toward it every day. If you come in raring to go, ready and energized, nobody else has any excuses.”

“I thought to myself, this role is about a young man who has played the dutiful son his whole life, and who has only shown the world a certain aspect of his personality, and who, during the course of this movie, finds the strength to show the world so much more than they expect of him -- he becomes a young artist and a rebel.”

“I can see why people are skeptical about me playing Allen Ginsberg,” he says. “I don’t look like him, and I’m English and middle-class and not from New Jersey. But that’s what I think is so exciting about it, because people have no idea.”

“I’ve always said that [acting is] a long process, and in a way it may be a lifelong one,” he concedes on a gloomy January afternoon in North London. “It’s about proving to people that I’m in this for the long haul, and that I wasn’t just looking to get as famous as I could for as long as I could and ride that out. I love almost every aspect of this industry and I want to be in it, and if I could drop dead on a film set at 80, that’s how I’d want to go.”

“The speaker said that part of growing up is aiming to succeed but being fulfilled by failing really well,” he says. “That’s what I feel this year has been all about for me. I’m looking at my work for the first time and not cringing. I’m going, ‘Yes, this is closer to what I want it to be.’ ”

"After we wrapped [Horns], we spent about 45 minutes by the camera truck -- me, our script supervisor, and some of the camera guys and some of the grips, just standing around talking about how much we had loved working with this director.” He pauses for breath, before concluding, “Now that doesn’t happen very often.”