For my first week as a new boy at Radley College, back in the summer of 1979, I was followed around by a film crew.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I started acting when I got a summer job at the Everyman Theater Company with the Neighborhood Youth Corps.
When I was 17, I studied at RADA in London for the summer. I wanted to live abroad and to pursue drama, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I thought I may as well throw myself in at the deep end. My first big role is in 'Starlet.'
In many ways, I was a typical young guy out of college. I was at Oxford, where every night there'd be a late showing of some great film.
I was scouted at the age of 10 by a Hollywood agent. I was a really shy, geeky-looking thing, and started in the industry by doing 'extra' work on films.
There was a year between school and getting going as an actor when I basically just watched films. Video shops were the new thing, and there was a good one round the corner and me and my brother just watched everything, from the horror to the European art-house.
Then in college I became obsessed with film, and wanted to be part of that.
When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.
I started making little short films with friends, and then I decided I wanted to get into the school play in high school.
I had left school at 16, gone to stage school - and, until I was 22, I hadn't really played anyone but myself. Then in 1979, I made a film with Mike Leigh called 'Grownups,' which went out on the BBC, and overnight this new career opened up.
I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood.