You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.

I wouldn't want to leave it so long before doing a play again, I get very stolid and sluggish if I do too much telly.

You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.

I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.

I would hate not to do a play every couple of years. I think it's not me.

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.