Playing with guns you revert to a little boy sometimes. But they're not great things to play with, so it's just making them look real. When it comes to shooting guns or using any prop, you've got to make it look like you know what you're doing with them. It's called acting.

I love to be the lead, but you can't always be the lead.

But then when you go through the process of making the film and you sit in the cinema two years later and your jaw hits the floor, it's quite sad in a way because you're looking at yourself - facially anyway - and see the way you looked when you were 20.

The original 'Edge of Darkness' was fantastic, a fabulous series. It was of its time, but this film version shows that times really haven't changed.

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. Alas, poor Yorick, that's about death. And in Romeo and Juliet everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

Elaine and I got married in summer 1979, we went on our honeymoon and came back for the premiere of Scum. All of sudden my face was on billboards in Leicester Square and people were crowding outside the cinema, going mad about the film. It was a complete shock.

You've always got to have an imagination in the game we're in but it explodes on this. You get to try the costumes on before you start and feel the weight of them, which is great. But then you're opposite some of the greatest actors in the world and away you go. You find your imagination takes over without you really even thinking about it.