James Norton

I’ve just been so lucky, but also I’m acutely aware that I’m only a brushstroke in the whole piece.

I haven’t had an interview in two years where I wasn’t asked about Bond!

I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don’t. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.

Ahh, I’m from Canada so… no. I’m a Northern Belle.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

I’ve always wanted to be a stand-up comic on some levels as well and I know I can play and sing but when people see me and say, “I didn’t know you were so funny… You’re like a real entertainer,” that’s what I like more than all the other accolades.

I have Faith Popcorn on retainer. I’m sorry-what I meant to say is that I have popcorn stuck in my retainer.

The older you get the more capable you get at managing life.

Denver’s pretty quick. They couldn’t keep up with him in the open field.

I sort of knew I was a bit of a drama queen. I always threw tantrums, so I knew I wasn’t a normal child.

I have so much to talk about. I have so much to share. There are so many different emotions going on inside of me right now.

I tend to lean on the side of pessimism and I wish I could be more optimistic. I wish I could be better at taking things for what they are – not analyzing them – but just going about my life.

We had this bonding week at the begining and I did a lot of improvising with Rupert and he’s really, like hes incredibly funny, but just as a real person, because hes funny in the film obviously, but he can do – he’s like really versatile doing acting, and Emma as well, she can just, she just does it, shes an actress, she always has been and she’s just incredibly intelligent young person.

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.

It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to always be nice.

Life isn’t just about you: It’s about family and friends and giving back.

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.