In an interview with the Sunday Times magazine, he said film heroes were now “the homogenised sort of eight-pack, tanned, straight-teeth, physicalised” men, with those who play them having to appear to be “clean living” and “moralistic”.

“You’ve got to look like you’ve just come off a vegan diet, gone to the gym, part Navy Seal, really clean valued, clean-living, moralistic - and then you go out and save the world from an impending danger that isn’t really dangerous at all,” he said.

“And it becomes not committed to any sense of the gubbins of reality: I don’t recognise this man.”