Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”

If you're in the movie or in television, your failures are very public, and so are your successes. You weigh them up against each other, really.

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

You never know people, do you? You can work with 'em for twenty years; you don't know 'em at all.