I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.

I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

When you're at drama school you spend so much time working on amazing texts and analyzing them, digging into them, and figuring out why it happens, why you are being asked to say what you're saying, and what the words mean. But then when you start working, most of the stuff would just fall apart if you subject it to that kind of scrutiny.

I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it's one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that's appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you.