Actors, who have no real sense of who they are or what they want, have long known that not just their gender but every aspect of their identity is on a spectrum. They can be anything they are asked to be. They aspire to a protean state, shape-shifting like high summer clouds.

I've had my moments of feeling miserable in my life, as has everyone, but it's not often that you actually get the opportunity to indulge that feeling. Mostly when people are depressed or miserable, they have to snap out of it because it doesn't work. It doesn't suit day-to-day life.

New York is still the most glamorous city I've ever been to, but it's starting to feel older. The sirens still wail; the paths in Central Park still pulsate with joggers. The Manhattan schist still trembles beneath your feet. But weirdly, it's starting to feel, dare I say it, a bit quaint.

Certainly in the theatre, you never have to get up before 10 A.M., and when filming, though you do have to get up terribly early, you usually get to lie down a lot during the working day. I thought my semi-bedridden existence was a choice. But now I think that actually, in fact, I must always have been depressed.

Anybody who was a politician at one stage - when they were at the "I'd like to be a train driver" stage of their lives - must also have thought: "I'd like to make the world a better place if possible." So, I think that's why most politicians go into it. They don't want to take over the world and most go into it for good reasons and then, presumably, are beset by endless things stopping them from following their natural inclination to do the right thing.

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