Always you find that the more decisive event wins so my father's sort of annual decisiveness which came upon him on the Day of Atonement every year, he suddenly remembered that he was Jewish.

I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

If forensic analysts confiscated your calendar and e-mail records and Web browsing history for the past six months, what would they conclude are your core priorities?

I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

It was but then, when you're, one of the great poisonous events that have infected us all who were in South Africa is that the idea of difference is drip fed into your veins. It's that that you fight.