Having spent so much of my life with Shakespeare's world, passions and ideas in my head and in my mouth, he feels like a friend - someone who just went out of the room to get another bottle of wine.

You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage. I haven’t actually played very many nice characters, certainly not on stage. It’s not a quality that attracts me.

I don’t do impersonations. I can do a wounded elephant! I can do a really good cow! And because of the amount of time I spent in North Yorkshire, I do a variety of sheep. All of which I will be happy to roll out for you!

Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings in expressing his ideas about many things – I found that very interesting.

During my time we had two chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, at different times of course, on the bridge, both of whom asked my permission to sit on the captain’s chair.

I came to feel very, very sentimental about those sets, which is ludicrous, because they represent everything which is transitory and insubstantial. It’s absurd that one should feel sentimental about timber and canvas.

It’s not just an exclamation, but it’s a rejection of everything to do with Christmas, with the spirit of Christmas, with gift-giving, with generosity.

I’ve met actors where you think, if only you could just clean up your act and get it together, people would want to work with you. Some people are so difficult, it’s just not worth working with them.

One of the things that I’ve come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I’m talking about myself.

During the course of the seven years I played scenes with an oil slick, I played a scene with a grain of rice. Sometimes with indescribable creatures. I remember having a conversation with something which was simply a smell, that’s all. It was part of our job.