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 don't have the energy or the mental security to get involved with all that. I think it's a good idea to be able to disappear into the story, so that the first thing the audience sees isn't you, but the part.

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.

It's taken me longer still to realize what a short span there is between those life experiences and the rest of your life. That's a job for the people who lived through it.

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.

The space and light up there in Norfolk is wonderfully peaceful. I find myself doing funny things like gardening, and cooking, which I rarely do in London.

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.