I've never taken a role where I don't like a person on the page. Sometimes there are changes that need to be made.

I think that when [Charles] Dickens met Nelly [Ternan] it unleashed this sort of carnal, anarchic, cruel energy within him, and literally after she met him he changed his whole life - he separated from [his wife] Catherine, he stopped all the children from seeing her and went on this bitter rampage.

Of everything I have done, 'The Archers' always gets the most excitement; there's a sort of uncontrollable joy from fans of the program.

I think Nelly [Ternan] actually has something very conservative about her, and she's very judgmental of (this other character's) situation, and can see that's about to happen to herself. So she judges it even more harshly [because] it's what she fears becoming.

I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.

It was amazing how much rehearsal helped with the performance - it was almost a theatrical approach to filmmaking.

Those moments when you don't feel self-conscious, when you escape that, are when you produce something meaningful.