We often get pigeon-holed as a tough guy, or whatever else. I've been pigeon-holed as a heavy and serious, and almost a baddy, but not quite a baddy, over the years of my work in television, particularly.

I always loved the challenge. When something new happened, I always used to get quite excited.

My last two characters have been Denethor and Walter Bishop. Both will be hard acts to follow. That sits in the hands of my managers, at present. I just have no idea what's going to be offered to me.

What I've observed is that television in the last decade has increased to something that's almost unrecognizable. They are feature films. That's a huge shift, and it's something the audience expects. They still may want to watch their half-hour sitcom, but when they watch scripted drama, they expect the standard.

Lord Of The Rings fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students.

I'm truly grateful to the writers of Fringe for giving me that because, over the years, when I've spoken about the character with them, I've always felt that this would be the perfect way to end and complete his journey, and to complete the journey of this series, and they gave it to me.

I've played a bunch of different versions of Walter [from "Fringe"]... I loved it when he was being random, which was probably the original version of him, more than anyone else. I loved doing Walter then, and all of the different mental states that we've played.