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I was a dancer from about the age of four, so I was always performing and forcing my parents to watch my brother and I do 'Jesus Christ Super Star' in the living room. My first step was community theater, and then I started to do films.

I wish I'd become a professional dancer sooner. I did other jobs - like baking - while dancing part-time, and didn't commit until I was 29.

When I was 4, my parents took me to see a musical, and I was like, 'I want to do that!' I started doing all sorts of musical camps and a lot of professional theater. I took dance classes for 10 years, too - I was never the most amazing kid in the other classes, but tap stuck with me for some reason.

My career as an actor started when I was six years old, taking dancing lessons. Then I started getting paid jobs to dance at the age of seven.

I had all the usual ambition growing up. I wanted to be a writer, a musician, a hockey player. I wanted to do something that wasn't nine to five. Acting was the first thing I tried that clicked.

As a kid, my main interest was dancing. When I was 8 years old, I was in a hip-hop troupe.

I started working on stage as a dancer when I was four; by 14 or 15, I knew I wanted to study the craft of acting.

When my brother and me got into performing in the late '40s and early '50s, it was a sensational opportunity to learn from our elders. Every show we played had a dancer, a comic, a juggler, a singer, an acrobat. I came to appreciate virtuosity in all forms of the business.

If I had an extra 20 or 50 years physically, I could have been the dancer of my dreams. But I never became that dancer.

I danced from the age of three, so I was always going to do something performance-related. I got into the Television Workshop drama group in Nottingham when I was 11 and went there for ten years.