So I think failure is important in my career.

Healthy body and a healthy mind – very simple.

But there’s nothing like that quality of leading a decent, dignified life, meeting up with other people who have similar ideals, expressing kindness and love and curiosity and challenging and argument and the excitement of ideas. Ideas can be marvelous.

A 'no' is free.

Everyone should do it. For me, it’s like going to the gym for my mind.

No, I would never say that. I would never say that I do something just in order to put a fresh spin on it or do something different with it. I am drawn to certain plays because I think there’s something about them in the story that I want to tell, or that I think is relevant—something that strikes me. With Macbeth, I’m not doing this because I want to do a crazy interpretation or production.

A couple of summers ago, walking through a forest illuminated by fireflies, with my man and our dogs.

Dying on the same day as someone much more famous than me.

I once spent a summer doing a puppet show in kindergartens around the Shetland Islands.

I do take a break, but I’ve also got – right now, I’m writing another book, another memoir [a follow-up to his bestselling book Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir], so even though I’m on a break technically, I’ve got that. I’ve got a production company so things are always rolling. I’m always spinning a lot of plates.