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I do have the odd dream where I'm on stage and I've completely forgotten what I'm meant to be performing - so they are more nightmares than dreams.

I'll give you my worst nightmare. I'm dreaming that I'm onstage, the curtain goes up, and I have no idea what my lines are or what's going on. I think I should know, I kind of know, I remember rehearsing... and the audience is there waiting.

I have a lot of nightmares.

I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.

All my life, I've had these flashbacks, these dreams, nightmares, daymares, like visions, where I relive certain plays. Only the bad plays. I see them over and over, as if somebody's rewinding a tape and forcing me to watch.

I just have this fear that I'll get on stage and there'll be that brief moment of adrenalin and I'll forget my line.

Once on stage, I was thinking of something else, and I forgot my line. I became so frightened. The girl I was playing with also became so frightened, she couldn't give me the next line. I just walked off stage.

Rehearsing a scene beds a role into you. But sometimes, if you over-rehearse it without unearthing any new meaning in it, you can suddenly forget your lines. You realise that you are on a stage, not in the real world. The scene's emotional power, and your immersion in it, disappears.

You know the actor's nightmare is getting up onstage and not being prepared? I think the writer's nightmare is giving a reading and somebody standing up and saying, 'That's not your story.'

If you're going to play a villain, there's no greater compliment than being told that you give people nightmares. I never thought I would be the actor that would give people nightmares.