“From a personal point of view, when people go on about the way that you look or how attractive you are what they’re seeing isn’t really you. It’s the character.

“Prince Andrei, for example, was set up to be a romantic hero, but that’s not who I am. If people saw me through a keyhole, as my life really is, they’d go: ‘Oh!’ The risk is that you start to read this stuff about yourself and engage with it and believe it. Then, I think, you’re really in trouble.”

Just as well, that this now 30-year-old actor is bright, hugely affable, able to laugh at himself and comes from a family that both delights in his success but, you imagine, wouldn’t put up with too much posturing or nonsense.

Born in London but raised in rural North Yorkshire, he’s the son of two teachers, Hugh and Lavinia, with a sister who does “a proper job” as a doctor. “Because none of them is anything to do with the industry, they’ve always been slightly bemused by the fact that I wanted to act ever since I played Joseph in the nativity play at the age of four.