I think my father would have liked to have been an artist actually. But I think he didn't quite have perhaps the drive or I don't know I mean he had a family to bring up I suppose.

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner everyone knows everyone and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.

I never did quite fit the glamour mode. It is life with my husband and family that is my high now.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

As might be supposed my parents were quite poor but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life as indeed over anything.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing but never - pleasurable.

I don't have a fear factor. Well not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

And so I think that if the person has the funds the network and the equipment to do this and also the experience which is the key factor then they can be quite deadly.

And actually about three weeks ago Micky Peter and I were in Vegas at the MGM Grand. And we did about 12 shows in seven days. It was quite an experience.

My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

Although we have in theory abolished human slavery recognized women's rights and stopped child labor we continue to enslave other species who if we simply pay attention show quite clearly that they experience parental love pain and the desire for freedom just as we do.

It's been quite an experience being conservative and living in the North East.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6 but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

Yes I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening and not reading quite fascinating.

As with real reading the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary.

I had one relative who passed away but fortunately none others. So my sort of experience of it is quite limited thankfully.

Sure I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life.

Yes I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience especially for my brain surgeon who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity and there really was no judgment.

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

Since my education I've done quite untraditional things. There are very few Etonians who went to Rada. And far fewer Etonians - certainly when I was there - went to Cambridge. I don't know whether it's the same now. Most people I knew went to Oxford because it seemed more of an easy bridge.

For every successful actor or actress there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough.