There's always a concern as an actor that you'll be boring unless your character is swinging from a chandelier.

I think it sits quite happily with me, the condition of being an actor. I see some people getting quite eaten up with it, with the insecurities. There are times when I long for continuity and stability, but I also love the idea of not knowing what I'll be doing next - or even if I'm going to work.

It's a real skill to be able to publicise yourself.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

As much as I long for a sort of security and consistency sometimes, I do enjoy sort of being busted around. I really don't know what's happening sometimes next week, let alone this year.

The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'

What's exciting is there's a curtain that divides the audience from this other world. You want to see behind.