One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.

So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I always believe it's better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.

I think part of Kevin's notion of being involved with the Old Vic was because he wants to blood himself with Shakespeare,