I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

It was still quite late when I got married, 30s, I don't know.

My emotional investment started when I read the first scene of the actual drama [45 Years]. I can't explain it, there's no logic to it, but the notion of one's youth that somehow comes back but is gone, a man of my age connecting to that timing of life.

The old actors in the old days, they used to go on tour, to get the play ready for the West End, and to learn their lines. The old timers used to say, "Be very careful, dear boy, what you get in to during the first weeks of a long tour."

I don't want to peak too early. The worry is that you never know until it's all over whether you peaked at all - and then you're finished and it's too late.

There just doesn't seem to be a market for something with aspiration anymore.