I moved to Manchester to join a band and ended up getting into acting, and I moved back to London to become an actor and ended up joining a band.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: Well, I guess this is what it's like!

It’s always interesting to me to tell stories that come from difficult political climates.

I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.

I've always played music and I've always been in bands and there have been periods in my life where the music has taken a much more front row seat than any acting. For a big period of time the acting work was really a way of raising money to fund my music. And then that all sort of changed around and that's fine.

You could pick another two people and you'd have a whole other story and that's why films about love get made and made and made - because there's a million ways to tell it and no two stories are the same.

Most of my friends are from the music scene.

'Upside Down' is a fantasy love story. It's about love at first sight - when you just fall in love instantly and will battle any obstacle to be with that girl.

Definitely River Phoenix is somebody that I thought, This guy is very cool. I wanted to be like him when I was a kid.