I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn't until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander' novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship.

The network wants you to make a thing that's just a stand-alone episode, so you never get any character or continuity. This is one of the ways in which television can actually be good, and even better than the movies, because it gives you a chance to tell a long story.

The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.

I can't say that I haven't done some bad acting in my time. I have. Usually that involves what we actors call indicating, when you twirl your mustache.

For me, the experience of making the show is very much like being in a novel. I enjoy getting the new script. I make a cup of tea and I read it the same way I would read a book, with the same amount of joy.

A great deal of my battle, as an actor, is to widdle away the things that make me self-conscious and try to trick myself into not being self-conscious.

The feeling of being at sea has put me in touch with who I am to a greater degree than if I had been on land all these years. So, in a roundabout way, I imagine it does inform my acting.