So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

To be born independently wealthy.

Nothing. Everything’s got me to this point and I had to learn lots of things. Maybe I just wouldn’t have been so terrified all the time and I would have got up a bit earlier – I missed quite a few mornings.

I wouldn’t have taken that meeting [with Weinstein in 1997].

To be able to play the piano like Artur Schnabel.

I cry all the time. I like crying: it means that you’re more truly aware of a circumstance or a person or an event.

Aside from family life, which is the ultimate happiness, when I see or hear a great artist.

If you have a nice drink before going to bed, you don’t stay awake at night. I like almost anything in a bottle.

I feel lucky to have been in this business for as long as I have. When I think of the intake that I was with at Rada, only one other person is still an actor, an old fellow called Bill Gaunt.

Probably a suit. If you buy a good suit, it lasts beyond your lifetime.