When school friends would think about appearing on stage as the most frightening, the most awful, intimidating experience ever, I knew that it was something I could do.

I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific. So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern. If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea. But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil. Maybe that's why I took up boxing. It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi.

People assume that I'm very highly trained, that I studied and did years and years of Shakespeare. I have no training whatsoever and I've only done one Shakespeare play at university. If people want to believe that, I'm happy to go along with it.

The only good thing I've ever noticed about money, the only positive aspect of an otherwise pretty vulgar commodity, is that you can use it to buy things.

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to simply walk down the street. In New York, I dashed in to buy a big pair of sunglasses to conceal myself, but the guy behind the counter shouted 'Hey! It's Dr. House.'

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven't fallen since.