We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them held their hand looked in their eyes been there.

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow hard bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.

I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

When you are 16 there is no fear whatsoever. As you get older you play in more important games and that is when you start thinking about what will happen if you win or lose.

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

Fame is something I think happens as a result of trying to do good work. If you're trying to be famous your work usually suffers.

It wasn't not being famous any more or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me no phones ringing nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now at 40 I feel I've got more to give than I ever have.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

I'm just not a private person. It's not like I do things because I want things to be public it's just that's my way of expressing myself and I happen to be very famous.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

I'd die if I was Madonna. I'd die. God what a horrible way to live. And Michael Jackson! To be so famous and to feel so isolated. I feel so bad for them. I don't know how it feels and I hope it never happens to me.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics called Cheetah blades Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

None of my characters are rich or famous and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.

It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life not having to think about anything.