We're both Welshmen and growing up, when Howard Marks was finally caught, it was all over the news. He did an interview in the Welsh language, which I also speak, and I was sort of just amazed that this man from a small country was for many years supplying much of the world with most of the marijuana it was smoking. It was incredible.

I play really bad punk rock guitar. Age-old friends; it's just great hanging out with your mates, causing havoc.

But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed].

I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss.

Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss.

Howard Marks is very intelligent and well read, eloquent, witty, charming. I think it was those qualities that got him through. I was interested to explore that because generally, we perceive criminals as dark, twisted, angry characters. Howard isn't any of those. He was punished for his crime, released from prison, and has lived to tell the tale.

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.