If I have time to myself. . .

I grapple with ideas for my next novel.

You wouldn't know it but I'm very good at. . .

Sleeping, even when filming. I'll have a 10minute lie-down between scenes.

You may not know it but I'm very bad at. . .

Patience. I've been genetically wired to want everything now.

A book that changed me. . .

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I couldn't believe the scope of it.

Comfort eating. . .

If pushed I would have to say . . . being half Italian . . .

pasta.

My biggest regret. . .

Is only lasting one and a half lessons of Italian.

When I was a child I wanted to be. . .

An astronaut. I was eight when I saw those ghostly images of Armstrong and Aldrin beaming back from space.

It's not fashionable but I like. . .

Leonard Cohen. I've always championed him. I love his sensitivity, his dark humour . . . and his success with women.

My favourite building. . .

Is the Chapel of St Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Cote d'Azur.

If I wasn't me I'd like to be. . .

Francesco Totti, the Italian footballer. For his glorious ability to turn the mundane into the sublime.

The shop I can't walk past. . .

Any Vespa memorabilia shop. I'm a Mod born out of my time.

My favourite work of art. . .

Francis Bacon's Screaming Pope. Tremendously disturbing and savage.

The best invention is. . .

Language.

John Lynch is an actor and author. His first novel 'Torn Water' has just been published (Fourth Estate, £12.99)