Mum was in her early 50s when she had four strokes in quick succession that almost took her off. I'd just come down from Cambridge with a rubbish degree. I spent a year reading to her - her eyesight was badly affected - and making sure she got proper rest. It was a special time but very intense, too.
I talked to friends who are actors and who do Shakespeare loads, and they all said 'learn it so that your family wants to clobber you, they're so bored.' You can never relax, that's the problem, because when you do, a bit of Shakespeare comes up to bite your cheeky behind. It just does, if you're not really focused on it.
My father describes himself as a Pole of Lithuanian descent. At Southampton University, he read aeronautical engineering and then the family moved to Hong Kong - this was before I was born - where he designed aeroplanes. Back in the U.K., he worked as a civil engineer, although every spare minute was spent researching his family's history.