For the last episode [of Downton Abbey], you'll need some handkerchiefs. I needed handkerchiefs reading it. It wasn't because it necessarily moved me while reading it, but it was the experience of reading it when I realized it was the last time I was ever going to be reading one of those scripts. That was quite terminal.

At 19, you know everything; by the time you're 40, you haven't got a clue.

Certain stories that you want to see resolve in certain ways are, and some aren't, but that's life.

In the age of the camera phone it's a bit weird when you're sitting having dinner in a restaurant and people think they're being very subtle taking a photo while in fact they're being very obvious. When you're in a middle of a mouthful with friends or family and people come up asking for a photograph, that's when you want to say, 'Actually, I'm going to say no; I'd like to finish my meal. This is my time.'

When you are in the eye of the storm, you are often not aware of the whiplash around you.

Julian Fellowes doesn't come to the set, except maybe once every six weeks, for whatever reason. He's not a producer, in that sense. But if you write him a one-line question, he'll write you a three-page answer.

The press mainly want to destroy a program by revealing what's coming up. For some reason, soaps like doing that.