The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.

So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.

I had a feeling about Shakespeare's soliloquies, that there should be a real exchange between the actor and the audience.

I so wanted to perform, and I grasped every opportunity.

I've just taken the decision that I'm going to now go full time back into the theater.