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We take so many of our freedoms for granted nowadays – I can travel where I like, I can have a baby when I like, I can do any job I want – but I do think chivalry has been lost a little bit.
As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I’ll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I’ll be happy. As long as I can write in some form, I’ll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.
I would like to do something modern and possibly funny.
None of us had any idea of how successful Downton was going to be. I thought I was signing up for another period drama that had a slightly modern feel. It had a freedom about it because it was coming out of the head of Julian Fellowes. Anything could happen and generally did.
Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating – the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.
My dad’s family were pretty working class, actually.
My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small – panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There’s traditionally a part of the show where they’ll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.
I’ve never tried to find my real parents. I’m very grateful to my mum and dad for adopting me – they’re completely incredible people. It was my dad who encouraged me to question everything, to forge my own path, to think, to read. I always felt it was my right to question everything.
At the age of 11 I was about 6 ft. tall and my voice had completely broken. That caused problems. I was this gangly, spotty, very unattractive kid. I wasn’t cool and I wasn’t a nerd. I didn’t even want to fit in with anyone.
Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy’s, the Actors’ Chapel on New York’s 49th Street, peal the tune of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’ If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway.