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My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.

I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man's home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range and, after the age of ten or twelve, never really considered any other.

The world when I was 13 wasn't truly driven by tabloid magazines and social media and reality shows. I was able to have a little more of a private life.

I grew up in a family that was multifaceted, sexually oriented, and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working, my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.

My parents always saw me as an artist, and that greatly influenced me.

I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.

My father was a newspaper editor, so I was surrounded by journalists my entire life. I think the fact that he was so well known may be why I chose to go into magazines and move to the States at a young age.

Before I was through my teens, I had been introduced and exposed to artists who would, in later years, become legendary.

In my 20s, I was a monk. I was obsessed with theatre, not being famous, not with television. I was 20 years on the stage before I set foot in front of a camera.