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

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.

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

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

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.

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

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.