There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

Quiet people, people who arent given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - theyre also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.