I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me.

I get bored very easily, so I love doing different things, changing, doing a job for a month and then doing another one for six months and then moving into a different group of people. I love being able to stop. That's one of the greatest benefits we have in our profession.

I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.

Never played a video game. Actually, I try to keep them out of my house.

I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.

The fact is that in England so many of our politicians are career politicians - they've always been politicians since they left their education. And in the old days of course politicians used to be fish mongers or doctors or whatever. They'd lived life. These days, power seems to go to the hands of people that that's all they've done. And I'm not sure that's a good thing, because it does remove them from the realities of life.

The great thing about acting is, because you're constantly playing other characters and exploring yourself because you have to find those other characters in yourself, you sort of broaden as a person over your life because you've been other people. So you can empathize with many different sorts of people. It's great in that way and I hope, therefore, as you get older as an actor, you not only get more interesting because you lived more, but you get a bit wiser as a person.