It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.

My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.

I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.

I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.