I'm quite simple, really. I like to play and inhabit my character. I really like to inhabit the situation. It's the situation that intrigues me.

You would no sooner ask me to play Shakespeare away from the Globe than you'd ask some rock star to make his new record on eight-track tape.

Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth.

If I were to do a sequel, it would be with Sophie as a very old woman and The BFG the same, a bit like that 'Let the Right One' in film.

The idea of doing a production of 'Carousel' that doesn't feel like it's stuck in the 1950s really intrigues me.

I had to turn down a part in 'Empire of the Sun.' It would have paid £15,000, which was a year's earnings for me then, but I was offered a season at the 'National Theatre.'