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I wrote my own play, 'The Westie Monologues,' about where I'm from in Australia, and it was very successful. From that, I started getting offers from television.

I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.

I had so many offers after 'True Blood' for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball's vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I've always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I've never really had the chance to do that.

Sometimes people offer you plays, they offer you parts, but they only offer it because I'm famous.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

I've done a lot of Broadway plays, and I'm fortunate they've all been so successful.

In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting - to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it - it's like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.

For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?

What I like is the acting itself. But I'm a lousy celebrity. I'm not interested in selling my private life. I take my private feelings to the work, but I want there to be a difference between me and whoever it is I'm playing.

Whenever I see a celebrity that comes to watch me play, I'm going to do for them the same thing they've done for me - bring them some type of joy.