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It is hard to get good actors who also do television, ads and films. Theatre requires six weeks of rehearsal for a play.

When you're doing a play that's fully produced, you have the benefit of rehearsing for four or five weeks, so you really get to live in the skin of the character for much longer than when you first start doing a character on TV.

I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.

You have actors who begin at a certain young age and there's very little change in their technique and the depth of their performances; they're the same 30 years later.

It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

For film and TV, try to have a more conversational tone. For stage, you'll need better diction and bigger vocal production.