I came into acting with that sort of dull, meet-with-triumph-and-disaster-the-same philosophy and it's been the right one for me.

I didn't have any desire to be an actor until right before I did it.

I worked in an insurance office for six years, and it was there that I just woke up one day and realised there was something massively lacking in my life, and a non-contributory pension and a subsidised canteen could not fill it.

Acting is rare. You can be rehearsing Ibsen with Sir Richard Eyre and suddenly he has to take a call on his mobile telling him his friend Arthur Miller has died. Or you can come back from a job on the Isle of Man to be told by your agent you're going straight out to South Africa on another shoot. There's not even any time to wash your pants.

Mask' wasn't the version that I wanted when it was originally released. It made money, but it would have made a lot more money. My version was a lot less depressing - tragic, but a lot less depressing.

My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.

I used to do my own taxes. You know how you buy that gigantic sheet at Staples, add up the restaurants, clothes, and taxis and glue your receipts into the book month by month? The more money I made, the more complicated things got.

Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.