Desperate Housewives' was a good experience, though, as I got to play the bad guy for once. My only complaint was they had me in a lot of sweaters.

I trust the [series] writers when I'm filming, because it's interesting for me to go in every week and see what's going to happen, and the challenge for me as the actor is to make it work.

I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about "the character," and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.

You can be in the public eye all the time and still have a private life, but the important thing is to keep in touch with the people who put you there.

I’m an openly gay man playing an omnisexual hero, who is loved on both sides of the Atlantic. How could I not be proud of that?

I am not one of those actors who dwells on the histrionics and the subtext and future text of the character. I deal with the scenes that I'm doing at that specific time, because if I do that, they play in more of a real way.

Many things shaped my identity as a young boy: a strong selfworth (something that was instilled in all three Barrowman siblings by our parents), my immersion in theatre and music, and my DNA. I was born gay. It's not a choice I – or anyone else who is gay – made. If it were, why on earth would anyone choose to be part of a minority, part of a group that in so many cultures and countries, even in the twenty-first century, is regularly blasphemed, hounded and worse?