One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing.

I quite fancy the 1940s. I like the trams and the trousers.

I don't really think of myself as an actor.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

I'm fascinated by how you'll change your position so many times over a lifetime, but really what you're doing is occupying a series of positions on a landscape.

The East is very mysterious to Westerners. Even post-Cold War, it's still an unknown entity.

I wouldn't be in a huge hurry to go back to Kansas. It was just bizarre. There's a lot of very, very heavy set people who believe in whatever they were told, because they didn't seem to get out very much or be interested in leaving where they were. They just didn't seem that curious, and I find that a little hard to deal with.