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

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.

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 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.

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.

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