I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that’s really good, because that is what it’s about.

As far as I’m concerned, Cate Blanchett is a goddess, but she’s really down to earth. She’s got all those Oscars, she’s made all those amazing films and she could spend her whole life doing that, but what does she also do? She gives birth to three boys and creates her own theatre in Sydney.

As far as I’m concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it’s an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that’s who you play to. It’s not money – it’s good to get some, but that’s not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.

Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor’s job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.

I don’t relax. I sit down and contemplate all the energetic things I should do.

If anybody asks me to do a job, I say, ‘Yes.’ I’ve said yes to everything.

Every great decision creates ripples. Like a huge boulder dropping in a lake. The ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.

'Doctor Who' is not as literary as 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' is - books have come out, but they are from the television episodes. So there is that difference... it's more scholastic.

Variety has always been in my mind: to do something totally different. I've had a parallel career since the beginning. On one track, the TV and film, the other, theatre, but they never crossed.