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

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We lo….

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be t….

Artists probably should have some impenetrable aspects of themselves..

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his s….

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting..

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..

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

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

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

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy..

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

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes….

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..

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

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

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 ….

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor..

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me..

To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination..

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 tha….