I wasn't campaigning for a role in a Hollywood television series, it was a fluke. So you've got to have a measure of good luck, you really have, being in the right place at the right time.

I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek.

One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.

I came to feel very, very sentimental about those sets, which is ludicrous, because they represent everything which is transitory and insubstantial. It's absurd that one should feel sentimental about timber and canvas.

Encouraging people to believe in it was the most important thing of all. It's one of the reasons I was always uncomfortable whenever film crews came on the set to shoot things. I didn't want our make-believe to be exposed.

One day, out of irritation, I said, you know all of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all those years of playing kings and princes and speaking black verse, and bestriding the landscape of England was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise.

The people who could do most to improve the situation of so many women and children are in fact, men.