Nope, I don't enjoy work generally. Not because I'm lazy; it's just all so stressful and worrying.

Art is something that nobody laughs at and nobody makes any money out of is the attitude, which I would dispute.

I have to say that I've always believed perfectionism is more of a disease than a quality. I do try to go with the flow but I can't let go.

I'm sure that a French production of this [Maigret series] would be different. For better or worse, who's to say, but probably not very good for 8 o'clock on ITV.

One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.

When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.

What directors of television drama constantly tell you is 'Don't act it. Don't try. Don't emphasise that word'. Whereas with someone like Blackadder, even though he's a relatively low key character in a way, he did relish the lines that he had and the words that he was given, with a lot of inflection.