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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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