I Have An Excellent Internal Compass.

Young People Are So Often Dissed By The Media.

It's Never Happened To Me Before, In My Career, And Never Will Again. It's A One-off Experience. It's A Rare Treat To Have A Cast Together For Six Years. Crews Come And Go, And A Few Of Them Have Been There Throughout, But Not Many. It's Rare, In My Experience, After 26 Years, To Have Had A Proper Company In A Show That Enjoys Each Other's Company, And Who Is Such A Fine Bunch Of People And Actors. To Have Struck A Chord With People, And To Have Had That Combination, Is Extremely Rare.

For The Last Episode [of Downton Abbey], You'll Need Some Handkerchiefs. I Needed Handkerchiefs Reading It. It Wasn't Because It Necessarily Moved Me While Reading It, But It Was The Experience Of Reading It When I Realized It Was The Last Time I Was Ever Going To Be Reading One Of Those Scripts. That Was Quite Terminal.

Julian Fellowes Doesn't Come To The Set, Except Maybe Once Every Six Weeks, For Whatever Reason. He's Not A Producer, In That Sense. But If You Write Him A One-line Question, He'll Write You A Three-page Answer.

I Always Try To Look For The Best In Most Places.