It may be my rather puritanical upbringing at odds with my inborn laziness that makes me feel guilty at the end of the day, unless I am able to point at some achievement. But this need be no more impressive than cooking a meal or going for a long walk.

I can't take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I'll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.

I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,'

I think it's one thing to declare your sexuality, if you care about what that is. It's another thing to start talking in public about what you do in private and who you do it with. It's not that they [my significant others] don't want to be identified as gay, but that they don't want to be identified as ... with me.

Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.

Most of the time when you do a job, a play or a film, you're wondering, "Will there be an audience?"

I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.