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

Artists probably should have some impenetrable aspects of themselves.

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.

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