I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it.

I'd always liked the idea that drama acts at its best as a kind of arena for debate, not just about the thing itself, but also producing aesthetic, stylistic, political and moral discussions. The Jungian view would be that it affects all of our imaginations and somehow taps into our hidden, ancient, primordial memories.

He has such a patronizing tone and manner, and such a sarcastic sense of humor. I found him rather brutal, a kind of elegant brutality which appealed. No, I think he came pretty much off the page.

All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.

I don't consider 41 being in prime of life. Even if I conceived a child tomorrow I'd be 52 by the time it was 10. I'm not sure I'd have the energy, and I find that quite scary.

I was born in 1961. Now I think the 16 years that elapsed between 1961 and the end of the wars is nothing. To a child growing up it felt like an eternity, an entirely different world.

I did decide that you have to put your name about a bit, and so, although I would have preferred to have never done publicity or an interview or a fashion shoot for a magazine or a chat show.