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

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

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.

I'd like to direct more operas.

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.

Having caught a glimpse of what I might be able to do with my talent, I feel a tremendous obligation to try to fulfill it.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.