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The best part about being a stand-up is the connection with the audience. There's nothing more gratifying then when you can make 300 people applaud and stand up - because that's all you.

A good stand-up, you lead the audience. You don't kowtow to the audience. Sometimes the audience is wrong. I always think the audience is wrong.

I don't know, I find that honestly, the stand-up thing in some ways is a little bit of a cliche to carry around, because people don't consider stand-ups really actors.

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it, direct it, produce it, the audience votes, and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.

With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.

I've never done stand-up; I came via small-scale touring theatre, through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, then I got employed on that as an actor who had a humorous sensibility.

I don't really like doing big stand-up. Whenever I do theaters, I don't like 'em. I don't think they're right for stand-up. I've seen people in theaters, and it just doesn't work, because you're talking to the guy next to you the whole time.