When I lost a race for the United States Senate, I thought the world was going to end for me politically, and 18 years later I was elected President of the United States. The biggest disappointment was that I wasn't able to communicate properly to the American people — with the proper conviction and the proper ability — where the country really stood. The pessimists, the naysayers, the change-wanters overwhelmed me, and I wasn't good enough. I wasn't articulate enough to have the country understand that we weren't in a recession, that we were in a rather booming economy in the last half of my presidency. That was a personal shortcoming, a failure on my path.

Seeing the future die, from Bobby Kennedy to dear friends.

Not being active in my own desires.

Actors live in a constant state of disappointment. I’ll never be happy with what I’ve done.

I think I’d just like to be chilling out really, so it’s like real summer family holidays where the most important things to decide are what are you going to have for breakfast, what are you going to have for lunch, what beach are you going to, and what are you going to have for dinner.

In the 1990s in New Jersey, being driven to a radio station early one morning. Our driver fell asleep and we were on the other side of a dual carriageway with cars coming at us. We all screamed and banged on the seat, and he woke up and pulled the car back across.

When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.

I’d like to go all melodramatic and have Vide cor Meum by Patrick Cassidy from Kingdom Of Heaven. It’s also in another Ridley Scott movie, Hannibal. It’s an operatic piece and absolutely amazing. Obviously Ridley Scott thinks so, too..

I haven’t really had a job. I used to work at my dad’s garden centre in my late teens, but it was just messing around.

My wife, because she manages me and sometimes there isn’t time for niceties and we have to talk in a language that isn’t very marriage-like.