“They looked at me and said, “We have no idea.” That’s why you have to make your own backstory.”

I came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I’d become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia.

The guys that write Once Upon a Time were major writers on Lost,

I’ve got to be in The Guinness Book of World Records for having the most heart attacks on television.

I think the most fun I ever had was playing King Arthur in Spamalot on the West End.

I decided Widmore was the evilest of the evil, but in the end, not even the writers knew.

When you’re tied to one show, you are very much at the mercy of the writers so you can suddenly get a script where you have a heart attack and die.

When you’re a regular on a TV show, they give you more of a backstory, so with these recurring gigs, you have to make up your own backstory.

So I wanted to play bad guys. But I’ve been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.

And we had lunch when I started on OUAT and the first thing I said to them was, “I spent five years on Lost, you have to tell me, was my character good or bad?”

My wife says I’m much happier when I’m not a regular on a TV show.

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

The one word you should forget when you start a new project is the word ‘I’ – you need to replace that word ‘I’ with the idea of ‘everybody else.

Making an idea into an emotion.

Both men have an authoritarian idea of government; democracy is merely a façade.

Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share.

I did an album and they allowed me to sell it at the show. I also did a Disney cruise line gig.

The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying ’24-hour news’ almost has satire laced in it.

I can single handedly dispel any ideas that sexuality is acquired. Trust me, you’re born with it.