I didn't get where I am today without ...

Catching the coat-tails of the swinging Sixties

I arrived in London as an architecture student in 1969, and found myself sharing a place off the Kings Road with 15 other starting-outers. What an excellent part of town for someone fresh out of boarding school. I was set free in this incredible urban playground that previously I'd only read about. Two of my flatmates were sound engineers at Olympic Studios, and they'd bring home tapes of something they were working on called Jesus Christ Superstar. As a result, I got an interest in theatre. Suddenly, parental ambitions and pressures got put into a different perspective. Next thing I knew, I was applying to RADA.

It takes courage and sometimes wilfulness to do so, but in my experience it's always the right thing to do. When some kind of intellectual override kicks in, things usually go awry. You can judge a book by it's cover. So if something looks and feels wrong for you, and your heart tells you to make a change, I'd say do it. Trust yourself. In all my best decisions, I have.

My first proper TV role came in 1979 in a producion of Dracula, starring Sir Laurence Olivier. And he was hugely helpful, supportive and nurturing of me, which was an amazing gift to receive at that early stage in my career. I mean, imagine the degree of encouragement and approval you'd feel as a result in what was, after all, my second choice of career. I went on to work with his wife, Joan Plowright, then with him again for a second time, and hence enjoyed sevn years of this fantastic, unexpected, unlikely friendship. I'm hardly as impressive myself as a mentor, but even so, the memory of what he gave me has meant that I acknowledge young talent wherever I see it, and try to make sure it knows how infinite its possibilities.

Optimism is a wonderful quality, but not one I naturally posess. The youngest of our three children, George, is my benchmark in this. He's 11, and has this fantastic positivity. Everything's possible in his view, which has to be down to Sharon (Maughan, the actress, Eve's wife), who's also very much sunnier than I. My take tends to be, "Well, this is probably not going to work out, but I'll give it a go anyway." How I admire those who start out from a different vantage point.

In recent times, I've lost two very close friends, and just two months apart from each other, one of them 50 and the other 51. By anybody's count, they were way too young to die... I've always operated on the belief that you get just one shot on this earth, never consciously wasting time and always trying to make the most of the moment. Their passing reinforced my belief in that strategy. How else is there to play life? Just give it all you've got.

At one of those two funerals I've sadly had to attend lately, I approached the bereaved mother of what was one of my old schoolfriends. "How's the shyest person I've ever known?" was her opening line to me. No one else these days would realise that of me, but it remains true, even now, I am very, very shy. It's just that I've developed a convincing way of disguising the ongoing fact.