For sure, you have to be lost to find a place that can’t be found.

Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.

But as my voice coach keeps saying, if we actually spoke the way they imagine the Elizabethan voice might have been, we wouldn't be able to understand it.

When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas.

That's one of those questions where somebody says "would you like to see more women behind the camera?" And then it becomes I must have interrupted the interview to make a platform stance. But, no, I do believe it. In Australia, per capita, we've got a slightly more balanced and healthier statistic than here. I've only just started working more regularly with female ADs and its just a beautiful, different energy on set.

I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britains greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.

Like any classic you hope to get rid of all the varnish that's built up over the centuries where people expect it to be in a certain way. It's a mighty play. It's about a very old king who also happens to be a very old father, so you've got the state and the domestic levels in there together. It's a story in extremis. Everyone knows the end, there's only two people left alive.