Working from home is so, so hard because I want to be present for them and yet there's so much to do work-wise. That's the biggest challenge for me.

I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.

There is always that potential in the same way - Roddy McDowall ended up playing Cornelius to Caesar [in the Planet of the Apes]. Two different characters. That's the joy of the craft. Bring it on I say.

I love acting and certainly won't give it up, but it's part of a bigger canvas for me now.

But that's not what an actor does. An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

I've done a fair amount of that stuff... when we did 'Lord of the Rings' the transformation sequence from Smeagol to Gollum was a 19-hour make-up job. You have to have a kind of zen button that you press and allow the mind to be focused in a certain way.