This industry isn't fair. It doesn't owe anybody a career. It's just about luck, determination, and showing up and being professional. The rest is out of your hands.

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

Obviously we had to study Shakespeare at school, but to be honest, I was not a fan. I found the language very difficult, and I didn't enjoy watching it or studying it. I auditioned five times for the Royal Shakespeare Company early on in my career, and I didn't even get past the first rounds.

Acting is a sport - especially working with Mark Rylance. There is competition involved. I have to be muscular, challenging, get audiences on side. It's extraordinary how Globe audiences join in - it's like competing at an event - I love it.

My career had been split pretty evenly between good guys and bad guys until I finally grew into myself enough to play a decent antihero, where you can combine the two.

After getting the job at MTV, the challenge was, 'How do I start my career as a television host without people holding my dad's career over my head?' It's a very easy thing for people to look to my dad and say, 'Well, he got his job because of this.'

This is still a man's profession, with a lot of men who intellectually and emotionally have not accepted that the military could be women's work.

Even as a college professor at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, I saw myself as an entrepreneur, and I went out, took risks, and tried to invent new things, such as participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge and working on self-driving cars.