ROBERT SHEEHAN

If you see a gaggle of teenagers walking towards you, you tend not to make eye contact, because you know they're going to recognise you. You learn to adapt: 99.999 per cent of people aren't looking to be harmful or unpleasant; they just want something, a photograph or an autograph.

I've been largely undecided about everything for most of my life. I can barely commit to a phone bill... Somewhere along the line it has become my career due to continuing work.

I think books, novels and autobiographies have a power to touch people far more personally than films do, so there's a bit more of a responsibility when you then dramatise it.

What's lovely about what I do for a living is the vast chasm of variety that constantly just comes at you from all angles.

I never aspired to be in a band, but being onstage is a very cool feeling. It's like you're the lord of the room. It's hard to croon and run around doing big scissor kicks while also trying to play, though. I'm still mastering that.

I've done a few roles in the past where people got quite worried when I started drifting away from what was written on the script. Often, they see improvisation as worrisome, because that's adding time to their day. But, in 'The Umbrella Academy,' they didn't worry too much about that, because Netflix has loads of money.

As a kid, I didn't drift into the comic world too much because I preferred to read fantasies novels and science fiction.

I'd like to be a steadily working actor and to do as many things as possible. I'm really enjoying the life.

If you enjoy colour and vibrancy, wear whatever you like.

I think a lot of people, when they start to become famous, they don't necessarily have the mental equipment to deal with it yet, so they try to keep it at arm's length and try to avoid it, which is fine for a while, but you can't keep pursuing a career in acting and that remain your attitude towards fame and recognition.

Acting is an incredibly gratifying, creative experience when you're doing it. But in the off-season, you want to scratch that itch, and writing has become that to me. It's a really pure form of creativity. It's good for my mental health in the same way reading books is good for me. It makes the day brighter.

I was a huge fan of 'Fargo.' I binge-watched the first two seasons in a couple of weeks. I loved that series.

You realise fame is something that if you court it too much or if you indulge in it too much, it will have a negative effect ultimately on your mental health and self esteem, because fame is ultimately about achieving positive self esteem through external factors, and that's a losing game, I would say.

One thing that I'm continually reminded of is just to always find something that will challenge you in a new way, a very new way, and that's not the easiest of roads, but it's the most exciting.

When you work in a creative environment, people get protective about their ideas. Sometimes it's justified; sometimes it's about ego.

The more I get used to my life, the more restless I become.

There are instances where, in my mid to late 20s, I very often found myself going for roles that they didn't want to cast me in, because I'd done good work, but in a producer's eyes, I wasn't high enough status. So I lost out.

I think people should feel less restricted by the perimeters of things like 'menswear' and 'womenswear.' It's not something that I really give much credence to when I'm buying clothes. I buy mostly ladies clothes. I think to be yourself, first and foremost, that's the easiest way to think about it.

I didn't read a lot of comic books. But I was into 'Dandy and The Beano,' which were like a weekly pulp fiction that featured characters like Desperate Dan, Dennis the Menace, and Billy Whizz - pretty simplistic stuff but very entertaining.

With supernatural type of movies, if they're not done correctly, there are a lot of actors just running and screaming and looking scared for an hour and forty, and that can get a bit old.

I'll always be somebody who spends a lot of time in a lot of places; that's just always going to be the way. But I try to spend as much time in Ireland as I can, because it's lovely, and it feels like a release.

Who doesn't change through their 20s? I changed probably more than the average person who lives in one place and has a job. But everybody changes significantly in maturity, we'd like to think, from 20 to 30.

There are actors who do various different shades of a similar character, which is fine. But I prefer the Cillian Murphy school of doing something that takes you so far outside yourself that it's an incredible challenge and adventure.

I'm always nudging myself into discomfort zones as much as I can.

Part of progressing in acting is turning down work, and that's hard; it's very, very hard to do. And I think you have to do that so as not to undermine your own sense of value.