The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws.

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.

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful often urgent and essentially life-affirming but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

It's been an amazing year of individual performances.

I really would love to do a piece like Julia Roberts or Charlize Theron in 'Erin Brockovich' or 'North Country.' They were both so amazing and so inspiring. I would love to touch someone in the way their performances touched me.

By age seven I used to comb my hair for performances just pull my hair up into a bun. Granted it wasn't a very intricate hairstyle. Still to be that responsible and disciplined at age seven is unusual.

America doesn't reward people of my age either in day-to-day life or for their performances.