Sometimes I look at Helen Mirren on stage and think, 'You really are the Queen.' You see people bowing to her at the stage door!
I had a schoolmaster who was a supernumerary at Glyndebourne Opera, and through ,I got a job as a walk-on in Peter Hall's production of 'Don Giovanni' there in 1975 or 1976.
If you are feeling something, then Shakespeare felt it and wrote about it - and wrote about it so eloquently.
In my whole career, in fact, I can remember only two first nights when a show was at its peak on the first night. And I just wish we could devise a system where critics came not on a single evening but were given a choice of performances to attend.
I worked as a clerical assistant at the Department of Health and Social Security for about three months before I went to drama school.
