I get antsy if a year goes by without doing a play. I don't go to the gym, so this is my way of trying to live longer.
I'm not that bothered about press nights as an actor or, particularly, by what people say about me, because I see myself as a reasonably small cog.
If you look at a painting that you love by one of the great masters, every time you go back to it, you see something different - a different attitude or brushstroke. 'Hamlet' is like an entire gallery of old masters.
I think having a dispassionate eye is a good way of making art. When you don't know the structures of a place, you are unencumbered.
Drama aids self-discovery like nothing else. In removing it from our schools, we remove the inestimable benefits of it from our society. No amount of studying oxbow lakes was ever going to help me emotionally through the death of my father.
There are a lot of actors out there who are able to engage with something in themselves which isn't necessarily their brain. But personally I find it very intellectually satisfying: doing your research and then burrowing as deeply into character as you can. I'm a naturally inquisitive person, too, and acting does feed into that.
Both Othello and Iago seem a bit cracked. If you spend 15 years being responsible for death and destruction, that sense of suppressed horror is strong.
The more rarefied a life you live, the easier it is to think that those who don't share it could be demonised. To find the common humanity becomes more of a struggle the more you surround yourself with nice things.
