I love playing real people. It's a huge challenge and responsibility which I take on board and which I relish. It also scares me to death. Give me a totally fictional character and I don't have the same sort of responsibility. If, though, I play Sigmund Freud or Robert Maxwell or whoever then there is a responsibility.

There are clues in the script... he will say "I think drugs are immoral"'... but the guy who says that kills, tortures, pimps and has whores working for him. There is this strange morality going on, which is rather like the Mafia.

I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation.

I love seeing my characters big up there and I would have liked to have reached a different public in movies from my television public. There's still a part of me that wishes that my character range could be seen on the big screen. Rather, as Rod Steiger was, because he was a big influence on me - about becoming other people and not worrying about your own glory or self esteem but sacrificing yourself to become somebody else.

What we're doing is saying what happens with the establishment and how are we as ordinary human beings are used as pawns. What do we really know about what goes on! We think we are a democracy.... Are we? I'm not so sure.

So, if I ever played Napoleon it would be with an Italian accent. He was an outsider, which also interests me.

I think its very dangerous, the idea of celebrity - you have to be constantly controversial to maintain the status of celebrity. Reality TV is the death of entertainment - its just mindless TV but popular because of its voyeuristic nature, and people are very voyeuristic.