I'm not an actor who consciously accesses bits of my life, in order to play parts. Obviously, you don't need to have been a father to play one, otherwise everyone who's been a father would be able to act.
With stage, you feel completely like you're just in a bubble. I love not being able to see anything. I love coming out and I can't see anything because the lights are so bright and it's pitch black. That's ideal for me, that's when I have the best time.
One of the great regrets of my life is that I smoked. If I could say anything to anybody starting out in life it would be, 'Whatever you do, don't smoke'. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.
A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It's a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.
I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn't operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it's actually also true - if I want to appear in public I want to look my best. If I'm onstage I like to do contemporary work, largely because of the trousers, because of the clothes. I like a decent, what we used to call a lounge suit. Then I can start to motor.