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When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

One thing I didn't understand in life was that I had $100,000,000 in the bank and I couldn't buy happiness. I had everything: mansions, yachts, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, but I was depressed. I didn't know where I fitted in. But then I found family and friends and I learned the value of life.

I had a handle on satisfaction, and I loved my career, but I didn't really know what happiness was. So I started on this quest to have a happy life.

I always had a larger view. I'm interested in real life - my family, my friends. I have tried never to define myself by my success, whatever that is. My happiness is way beyond roles and awards.

If you have not taken the time to define what happiness means to you, what have your spent your whole life pursuing?

I just like being on my own on trains, traveling. I spent all my pocket money travelling the London Underground and Southern Railway, what used to be the Western region, and in Europe as much as I could afford it. My parents used to think I was going places, but I wasn't, I was just travelling the trains.

I had a nutty career. I was living in New York. Then I got to an age where my friends and sister were having children, and I started to think I needed to orient myself towards a world where it could happen.

Through a long and painful process, I've learned that happiness is an inside job - not based on anything or anyone in the outer material world. I've become a different and better person - not perfect, but still a work in progress.

Once I found professional happiness, it gave me time to think about other areas in my life in which I wasn't happy. The next obvious candidate for introspection was my marriage.