We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.

I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.

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.

It was pretty daunting. Normally, I never go to a gym, but before we started shooting, I thought I'd better. I reckoned I was in really good shape, and then I looked around and I was half the size of everyone else. A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.

My heroes were all in the theatre.

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because theyve been on reality TV or something.

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.