When the Americans are behind you, they're behind you 100%, and this gives you real confidence as an architect. They expect you to lead a building project - to make the kind of big and costly decisions that, in Britain, have been handed over to project managers and cost-cutters.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called 'FMR,' so we have a common interest in design.

There's a very small group of elite actresses who are my age, who people want to work with. It's not easy to get a good job with good actors.

It seemed glamorous when I used to go into work and get to be on a trading floor or see how the business worked a little bit before I ever understood what it was.

I work in a business environment forty hours a week, and writing is what I do to unwind. It allows me to transport myself to a happy place where I can indulge my hopes, beliefs, aspirations and fantasies. It also allows me to live and breathe a topic for eighteen months while I'm researching and writing.

For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.