I suppose I've got a reputation for playing quite extreme characters and making them quite believable.

Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.

Getting older is a struggle. I always feel that just under the surface of acceptance and enjoyment of the ageing process is a terrible hysteria just waiting to burst out.

I think I'm becoming more relaxed in front of a camera. I suppose I'll always feel slightly more at home on stage. It's more of an actor's medium. You are your own editor, nobody else is choosing what is being seen of you.

When you come to actually act, it's a game. It may be a very serious game, but it's still a game. If you lose that sense of play, the work suffers.

Well, I think tone is very important with this show [Masters of Sex] because there are certain elements or certain aspects to the show that may be reminiscent of other shows. But, it really is a very new kind of show, in terms of the subject matter and the way it's being dealt with, and the fact that it's about real people and real events.

Having said that, what I think we found, in doing the show, and in life, generally, is that the more you try to separate sex from everything else, it's impossible. You can't. The act of observation affects the actual experiment, and we see that in this.