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For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.

It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.

In theatre, you've got to make the connect with your audience in the first three minutes. If you haven't, you know you've almost lost them.

You'd go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until you went on the air.

In theater, you really work out the kinks and figure out exactly what you want to do and what we want to say, so by the time we have an audience, we're really prepared. With TV, you have a day... Sometimes, just a few hours.

Right before I graduated from the national theatre school, I got the part of Roxie Hart in 'Chicago' in Copenhagen. That led to me playing it here in London. I was 26 when I came over for that. It was the first thing I did as a professional, and it is still the experience of my life.

It was an outdoor Shakespeare theater that I grew up at. That feels like home, and the place I'm always trying to figure out how to get to.

I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion.