I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you’re never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style. It’s in the spirit of it.
No, I love the idea that someone changes. As an actor it’s always the thing that you look for. He is someone who starts off bright, cheerful and confident and then has everything taken away from him. It’s a wonderful journey to take.
It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you.
I’ve always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden’s animations.
Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.
Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There’s very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I’m lucky enough that it’s reasonably mild in my case.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.
