Very often my weekends are spent performing on Saturday, on stage in the afternoon and again in the evening.

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.

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

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

I would say critically of myself that I am somebody without secrets. Sometimes acting depends on you having a secret. I don't think I've ever had that.