My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.
I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.
Having your adolescence at an all-male boarding school is just crap.
I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated.
Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.
When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.