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Unfortunately for me, I was one of these people who took a long time to learn that the material at his feet was fine.

You heard it from the heart, you saw it in their eyes. Then I got used to the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers and my feet. That for me was the essence of the battle.

I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.

But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews.

The people I always loved listening to had a little bit of dirt under their fingernails because they had done some living and had these stories to talk about.

My characters populate a big, vibrant world. Sometimes they rub shoulders. Sometimes they don't.

I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.

When I'm working on my characters, that's something I pay a lot of attention to: how their body works, how they move, how they articulate.

For me, when I did 'Thor,' they changed my lines at the last minute, and then I had to speak with an English accent - and it was horrifying. I was in front of a crew of 250 people on my first day - never happened to me before.

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.