People may say I developed an iron will but what really happened is that I made myself much fitter. I think an iron will is always supported by fitness.

'Survivor' wouldn't have happened had I not gone out there and helped CBS to sell sponsors to finance the first one. Part of my thinking on 'Survivor' was that it should have rewards that are corporate brands. A Big Mac one thimble-full of Coca-Cola.

My biggest fear ever is to be involved in a plane crash so when that happened... well I'm just thankful to be alive. I'm just grateful to be here at all.

I'd gone from being this art student messing about with music to this girl with a record deal magazine front covers and all this hype. In many ways it was everything I ever wanted but when it happened all I felt was total paralysing fear.

Grief has limits whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened but we fear all that possibly may happen.

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

It wasn't not being famous any more or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me no phones ringing nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now at 40 I feel I've got more to give than I ever have.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life not having to think about anything.

Well I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy.

I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye whether they manifest it themselves or whether it happened by accident - it doesn't matter to me. I think there's a great misunderstanding of what it is to be famous.

As a novelist I mined my history my family and my memory but in a very specific way. Writing fiction I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

Today the Iraqi citizen sees that America is coming and wants to occupy his country and kill him and he is willing to experience for himself what happened in Palestine.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and actually whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings.

As an actor you just want to work and then you just want to be on a show or have a job that you love and you hope that job will last - those things have happened. To have that platform to then talk about something that is very personal to me like marriage equality it feels like a gift. I try and really respect that voice and not abuse it.

What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they already believe that women get the same pay as men. They don't even really understand that equality hasn't happened with the pay force.

And my career the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

The big shift in approach on education that we are taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.

What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities so that head teachers can decide what's truly important because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.

Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism which we don't want to admit the loss of the empire of the United States and American exceptionalism. In fact American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories from education to infrastructure.

As you look back at your life there are just a million different things that have happened just in the right way to allow you to make your dreams come true. And you know someone has all that under control.