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.

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 think one probably absorbs things like a sponge and things emerge without your always being aware of it.

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

I always want to do things that are different. I don't want to be doing the same thing, the same performance constantly, and it feels like most people tell you that they are the same. However different you feel might approach them.

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.