I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it.
When I started out, I wanted to be Billy Joel. The plan was to be a singer-songwriter of that ilk, and, then, I got waylaid - that's probably an unfair way to say it - from being a rock star by the musical theatre stuff, which I love doing.
A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it.
I went to Paris for a year in 1986 to study theatre; there was a lot of clowning around, buffoonery and fencing. It was then that my own style kind of blossomed.
I tend to make bolder and more interesting choices after I've done theatre.
I was prepared for the theatre, but not for the nuts and bolts.
In fact, one was so booked out we went from March and were to go till November, but the pantomime was booked so they transferred the show to the Prince of Wales Theatre because it was so packed out, and it ran on from there.
In 1952, I recited aloud for the first time, booming in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre from a bad poem that had won a prize. I was twenty-three.
I perform at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where my race and gender are rarely pointed out.
Everyone the world over talks about British actors and British talent and I think that's because we were trained - until now - in theatre.
There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both.
I've been doing theatre for years, but film acting has broadened my horizon.
I always admired Hugh Jackman as an actor in movies but also in theatre because I'm a big fan of Broadway musicals.
When I was eight or nine years old, my older cousin took me to the St. George Theatre on Staten Island to see a Bruce Lee movie and a Jim Kelly movie. Those were my first martial-arts films, and I fell in love with the genre back then.
I studied drama in high school, and when I was 18, I studied at the Actors Studio in New York. Then I moved to London when I got engaged to Bryan Ferry, and I studied at the National Theatre there.
I like simple things. I like to sneak in the theatre and watch movies. I'm a movie buff.
My mother worked in the old Minsky's troupe, which toured the country in the golden age of burlesque theatre.
I find it very strange when people say that they are trying to solve 'Uncle Vanya' or find a solution for 'Henry V.' Plays aren't puzzles. They are about playing. But so much theatre has become about performing and acting rather than playing, which is a great pity because audiences are captivated by watching people play.
I wound up graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts as a theatre major and then was honored to be accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Musical Theatre program.
I really look up to actors like Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett who have a strong background in theatre.