I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I'd meet beautiful women in the rain.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It's a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don't. You have compassion, you try and help people. It's a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.

I don't normally watch films I'm in because I'm squeamish about that and it takes me quite a long time to recover and I have to go to work. I'm not being coy or cute, but it's just true.

Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth. If you imagine yourself having to spend two and a bit hours cooking bolognaise, remembering a whole major work by David Hare and speaking it at the correct moment between chopping carrots and stirring the onions in front of an audience - the normal human response is 'Please, can I go to the airport?'