A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If as some evidence suggests exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life studying them could revolutionise biology medicine and biotechnology.

If I wasn't doing this I'd be in school studying political science or socioeconomic something. I love visiting different cultures and finding out how they make up a society.

I wanted to have a political career. I thought studying political science would be the best way to achieve it.

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects but I think I was a pretty good student.

Ooh it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.

Actually I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

I never stopped studying Buddhism. In the past few years in between movies I do a retreat.

I always always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that when I got a mini-series I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening and going once a day to beg for food.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.