I was concerned about doing the right thing when I was a kid. I suppose as a child, youre a massive egomaniac, and you think that everything you do is going to affect the world.

I was a dozy boy; I'd like to have been like James Dean, but I was more Arthur Askey - pathetically rebellious in a cheeky, chappy sort of way.

I never went to acting school. I started in the circus, music hall, I was in a group, did kids bits. Ive always had this kind of insecurity being uneducated.

I'm entirely uneducated. I went to public school - public in the American sense - a blue-collar, working-class school. I never got a scholarship, I left when I was 15, never did any exams.

The urge to act became the overriding force in my life. It thrilled me. There's a moment with acting when you're in the groove, and you and what you're trying to do are seamlessly one. That happens sometimes, and I'm really happy it can happen to me.

I'm crap at interviews. I'm just not very good at sentences.

There's a thing I think children realise at a certain age, which is that if their parents say, 'Don't do it', and they go ahead and do it, they're still not going to die. And I think that's what it is: that no matter what you do, you're not going to die.