I did start reading quite young but I was always read to by my parents, who are both actors. Bedtime stories from when I was about two/three to when I was about 15. In fact they didn't stop until I eventually kind of kicked them out of my bedroom.

What I do believe is theatre is a medium with a peculiar ability to air vital issues.

I am a coward, basically, but one of the things about acting is that you are always putting yourself through yet another test.

Books don't exist unless you read them. And it's a two way process - you write the book as you read it and you fill in the gaps. You discover it and you put the marks together and without you doing it they're just marks.

The idea that if you are very clever you shouldn't be an actor would be laughable in Russia.

I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers.

Where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.