Probably the curtain call of my final performance when I played King Lear.

When I was about to embark on filming The Lord Of The Rings, prior to any kind of fame or notoriety, full of hope and dreams, and excitement of the adventures ahead.

Last night, on stage in New York.

There was a moment in my early 20s when I’d finished Emmerdale and didn’t know what was next. I drove from LA to San Francisco listening to Tracy Chapman and it felt like one of those pure moments of uncomplicated joy.

Any lasting relationship needs non-negotiables. We made the decision early on never to be apart for longer than two weeks: 26 years married and we’ve only broken that rule once, by 11 hours, when my wife was in Sleepy Hollow. If I ever meet [director] Tim Burton, I’ll be having words.

God has never let me down. He’s a key factor in guiding my decisions and feeling safe within them. My wife and I suffered three miscarriages, one of them quite late in the pregnancy. Without faith, we would have retreated into our own corners to lick our wounds, but our love increased.

Being a father teaches you very quickly that you are not the center of your own universe. That’s one of the gifts of having to wipe poop!

“David, you are going to walk among kings.” This was my mum’s prophecy when I was small. My father is from a royal family in Nigeria, so I interpreted it that way. Remarkably, she was right: I went on to play King Pelasgus, Henry VI, Martin Luther King and Seretse Khama.