Not My Father's Son

No matter what is going on in my real life, I know how to block it out when I am working. Whether I have had good news, bad news, am feeling hungover, joyful, sick, it’s all part of the job description of an actor to know how to neutralize it all and become whatever the character needs to feel.

I love long flights. The feeling of being completely unreachable is something I savor, and the limbolike state of being, having departed but not arrived, somehow allows me to catch up with myself, to regroup and check in.

I just like acting; that’s why I do it.

my body was manifesting physically what I could not yet cope with emotionally

I decided that there was no way Hamlet was mad. He was slipping into the same deep water as me. He was at the start of a nervous breakdown too.

We’re all so conditioned to entering relationships hiding our baggage. Now he and I were laying ours out unashamedly and embracing it.

One of the good things about having had more than a few relationships before I met Grant is that when we did meet I knew quite a lot about myself. And so did he.

Here I was, the bright new London theatre star, playing Hamlet alongside his wife’s Ophelia, about to start a family. I had everything going for me, and I felt I had no control over anything.

This wasn’t going to be easy. I needed to be strong. I had nothing to be ashamed of.

as with all difficult things, it was a process