I’ve been quoting the book [on Peter Sutcliffe] constantly in rehearsals. Some members of the cast have stated their disapproval that it should even have been written. Some of the women have expressed more –...

Reading Shakespeare is sometimes like looking through a window into a dark room. You don’t see in. You see nothing but a reflection of yourself unable to see in. An unflattering image of yourself blind.

I can’t tell you, it’s very bad news, might need it.” And I never went back there, Tone. Home on the bus, heart still thumping away. A whole new world ahead. We tend to forget...

Michael Caine should have the last word on the reviews: ‘What about those reviews then?”I don’t read them.”Don’t read them? You wrote them didn’t you?

Why is an actor’s unintentional giggling called a ‘corpse’? It seems to me quite the opposite. It proves that he’s very much alive, and can still tell how silly this all is: him dressed up...

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

The effort of learning. It’s the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

Ciss says, ‘People have less emotions than actors think they have. For much of the time we hide our emotions, we haven’t time for emotions. Our brains work so much faster than our emotions.

This is a familiar syndrome. There is a stage with every drawing or painting when it looks banal and clumsy. It’s worth pushing through that, working through the cliché to find out what made it...