Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.

You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on.

There is something essentially sanguine about me, which I am inclined to attribute to the fact that I was born by caesarean section. It must affect you.

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.