My mother was very agnostic. She would never set foot in the synagogue, she couldn't be doing with it.

I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

I find its attention to living this life rather than the next one exhilarating because I think even independently of Judaism that that's the right way to go about life.

I suppose meeting people whether it's in real life and actually shaking their flesh and blood hand or shaking the mystical hand of the character all rub off on you in some way.

But now I've got a young son and his interest is in science and now when I talk to him, I see that in the science sphere of our lives there is new, there is progress.

I think it's a very central tenet to it yes, it is. I can't bear it, I can't bear inequality, I can't bear bad behaviour to other people. I cannot bear it that people are mean to people who can't help what they are.

Always you find that the more decisive event wins so my father's sort of annual decisiveness which came upon him on the Day of Atonement every year, he suddenly remembered that he was Jewish.