I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

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

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

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.

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