My favourite British spots are any of the beautiful parks, especially on a sunny day such as this, after a long stretch of cold, cloudy and rainy days.

Things happen to us and reaction is sometimes tough to measure.

I turned down a lot of things - some very lucrative - because I could afford to at that time. That didn't lead to a happy place. I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing.

I love David Fincher - even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least.

I had been used to improvising and even in the audition I was feeling free to rearrange Aaron Sorkin words a little bit, as lovely as they were. I didn't find out until after I got the part how furious Aaron was at me for doing that. They said, "He was livid. He did everything in his power not to jump down your throat!" But I came to realise that Aaron was writing in metre and the rhythm of the language is very important.

Most actors, unless they're big movie stars and can carve out huge chunks of time to focus on one movie that takes six months - the rest of us have to jump around to make ends meet.

I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.