My idea of a great holiday is not to go out. It's to find somewhere where I'm not confronted by people coming up to me and saying, 'You're Art Malik, aren't you?' It's quite nice sometimes not to be recognised.

When will we get a female director-general of the BBC? Where is the colour when you go further up the food chain? It disappears.

Not until somebody turns round and says, 'Art, how do you fancy playing Charles Dickens? How do you fancy playing Prince Charles in this biopic?' Until those movements come, then no, we haven't got past anything.

I've had a fantastic career playing great parts. In many ways, the colour of my skin has been an asset because I've been asked to play certain roles as a result. I don't apologise for playing them anymore than Robert de Niro is sorry for playing American-Italians.

When I was getting injured so much, I spoke to my family and my manager and said, 'I need my body to recover.' The first thing I thought was that I needed to stay upright. When I went back to Brazil to play, after a few months, my body was perfect.

It was the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but it's a family thing, and I guess it's clean.

Through the years you, the Delaware State family and your predecessors, have faced many challenges. You worked through them with fierce determination and good will, and you have made great progress.

Hard Hit,' a YA collection of poems, explores the country of grief and survival. Mark, a 16-year-old boy and skilled pitcher, must confront the coming death of his beloved father with the help of his friends, family, baseball, and an idiosyncratic belief in God. I used my own experience of my parents' deaths to inform this journey.