To me, England is past its sell-by date. It's not the country I grew up in.

I signed schoolboy forms for Watford when I was 12, but then my parents got divorced, and I never kicked a ball for three years. I rebelled, I left home, but getting back into football sorted me out. It was the second chance I needed.

I've always felt that people put me down, and I'd fight back. I played football 15 years, and nobody gave me any credit, and they never will do.

When two people break up, it's all about them; they can't see anyone else. And the people getting smashed to bits are the kids. Then you're getting torn - your mum wants you, your dad wants you. You just get shredded. It has a long-lasting effect as well.

As I read more and more fairy tales as an adult, I found massive collusion between their 'subjects' and those in my fiction: childhood, nature, sexuality, transformation. I realized that it wasn't by accident that I was drawn to their narrative structure and motifs.

The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.

I'm just used to having so much control in music and in acting you have to give that up a bit. Sure, our voices are heard on set, but at the end of the day you can lose an argument. Whereas in music, if I feel the second verse needs to be changed I can change it. I find it really hard as an artist to give up some of that control.

If you grow up playing in church, it removes a lot of the boundaries that other musicians might have, growing up with sheet music or whatever.