You never know when you're taking a job, ever... but you try to take good scripts. That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available. Even then, it's not [really] in your control. Certainly not in film and TV, because there are so many other elements. You just have to take control of your own performance.

Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.

I'd lived in LA for two years and I said to my agent that I wouldn't do any more network TV, because my family and I had just made the decision to live in England. It would be a whole year in LA shooting network TV.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

My parents were incredibly inclusive.

Dramatically it's always more interesting to conceal rather than reveal things.