I'm always conscious of the fact that I am part of a profession that is 80% permanently unemployed. So, to be working in any sense is to be privileged.

It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do.

I never lose that terror of 'this is my last job, I'll never work again.' You can never relax and rely on whatever reputation you've built.

Ultimately it's a leap of faith and a leap of imagination to put yourself back in time into those conditions and situations and see how you would react.

They were totally supportive, always saw everything I did. One of the thrills of my life was when they went to the theater to see something that I wasn't in. It opened doors for them that otherwise would have been totally closed.

I had to think long and hard about what it would imply, what it would mean. Would it mean any alterations of one's lifestyle? Or, more than that, the way that people regarded you? The way they reacted to you if you had a Sir in front of your name?

There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another.