If all you're doing is making money, you have a luxurious but empty life.

I watch an awful lot of old Hollywood movies - Ill devour anything with Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. My absolute favourite is Sunset Boulevard starring Gloria Swanson.

I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show Nanny 911 occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.

My father worked for the Foreign Office, so he was away a lot of the time. We were a very volatile family. There was a lot of love and a lot of conflict. The conflict kicked in mostly during my adolescence.

My preferred environment is by the sea or somewhere rural. I don't want to be in a city, I don't want to visit New York and I don't want to go shopping.

I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is something special about that sort of terrestrial television experience for a mass audience.

What I do for a living is re-create human emotion, and that's a pretty weird thing to do from nine till five.