I'd like to direct more operas.

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.

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

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

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.

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.

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