I've always been scared of advertising folk. I've met them at parties and I've been to their offices and I've always found them intimidatingly cool. At one company I visited, they held their meetings in a caravan that had somehow been installed in the place, a rather more exotic place to gather than the typical BBC glass box.

I was trying to break out of the suburbs, and when I did break out, I don't think I took my whole self with me - I think I played a role of being too cool and hip.

Elves are cool, man.

I wondered how they would top the Pirates and skeletons and moonlight, because that's a pretty cool concept.

I'm trying to mix the cool, independent stuff with the big stuff, but it's been difficult finding the right roles. It's been an interesting ride as far as my career pendulum is concerned.

The truth is - I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven't had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?

It's hard to encapsulate my inspiration because there are so many different looks, but I think it's just like, sexy girl you see walking down the street in a cool outfit. A lot of eyelet, a lot of leather, playing with the hard and the soft, the good and bad inside of us all.

Danger is cool.

I'm finding, as I get older, that I'm not much of a believer in redemption. I mean, I believe in redemption in real life - redemption does happen, and it's cool when it does - but I find myself getting leery of my desire for it in stories (especially my own).

The cool parts - the parts that have won Dubai its reputation as 'the Vegas of the Middle East' or 'the Venice of the Middle East' or 'the Disney World of the Middle East, if Disney World were the size of San Francisco and out in a desert' - have been built in the last ten years.