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

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it.

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.

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.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.