That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

I don't tend to use technology all that much. Of course, I can't avoid it - it's called the telephone nowadays. And I do a certain amount of email, work-related primarily, on it. But I don't do a lot of looking for things online.

I definitely consider myself a Method actor, because of my training. I might dispute what people consider a Method actor to be. For my money, a Method actor is an actor who has a technique. That has a method. And not one method, but whatever might be required. So a Method actor is always learning.

I do, however, have tape over my eyepiece as well. What I think my peace is saying isn't, "Oh I have something to hide. I don't want you to look," it's more saying, "No thank you. I prefer you not look. I'm not giving you permission."

You can't really gauge the difficulties of television. There's difficulties and joys that happen with an amazing, great team, when one is working. Television can be a very frustrating job for almost anybody working in television, because you're shooting episodically, and you don't know one scene from the next, and maybe they change around.