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As a kid, I was pretty obsessed with dinosaurs and the day that my parents took me to Dinosaur National Park, I didn't think life could get any better.

My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana, and he remembered riding his horse across the prairie and seeing some large bones sticking out of the ground. He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I wanted to dig up dinosaurs.

I loved dinosaurs, I loved space, and I thought maybe I'd be the first paleo-astronaut.

My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.

I'll never forget the time my mother showed up with her best friend and two daughters, and all four of us dressed up in matching clothes, shoes and hats to go pick up my brother from school. I thought it was a fun thing to do, but we stepped outside my brother's school and he was mortified!

I found my first dinosaur bone when I was 6, growing up in Montana. Ever since then I've been interested in dinosaurs.

I went to Cork, Ireland, and stood on the dock some of my ancestors had left from. I felt their ghosts gather round me, and I cried to imagine what it must have felt like - leaving that beautiful land and those beloved people, knowing it was forever.

I went to Niagara Falls with my family when I was young, and I cried because I thought it would be bigger.

Since I was a boy, from this house, I was out rescuing crocodiles and snakes. My mum and dad were very passionate about that and, I was lucky enough to go along.