I can't believe, even in 'The Guardian,' people ask the questions, 'Where did ISIS come from?' 'How did this happen?' 'Why do young Muslim women go off to join them?' Maybe because we've been degrading their people since 1917. Maybe their teenage years are a little bit more stressed than that of Christianity.

Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.

My understanding is that we are generally a very philanthropic and compassionate people - that when there are disasters in the world, individual citizens send loads of money into appeals for different things. We're a bloody violent people, football fans, and we've been successful at wars, and we sell far too many weapons.

I certainly never pictured myself even attending the Academy Awards, much less winning at 56. I very, very happily settled into a theater career. I did more than that, but I let all of my agents and people go. I said, 'I don't want to be promoted in film anymore. I have enough to do in the theater, so I'm just going to carry on.'

For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'

If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.

I had no idea that I could sustain a career as an artist. But, I loved music and wanted to be in the music business.

Music was something I had put aside to make movies. Somehow I earlier felt there was only so much creative energy allotted to your life and only that much time to pursue your creativity. But I was wrong.