Fortunately, I’ve often been happy, which you wouldn’t necessarily guess from the roles I play. I’ve always been very happy to have my children with me, particularly on location. My daughter was in in London when I played Mary Stuart at the National Theatre.

I am probably happiest now, but I have been happy at every stage of my life.

Right now. Ask me again when my children are grown, and I’ll sob, “When they loved me more than that woman/man they’ve shacked up with.”

In my 60s. So many things that tortured me when I was younger have fallen away. Writing The Apology, the letter I wrote in my father’s voice, apologising for abusing me, has freed me from the last vestiges of anger, confusion, rancour and hate. It released me from a frame that had determined my life.

Outliving my kids – and rats.

Going to pieces while meeting John Squire, the lead guitarist of the Stone Roses, backstage after a gig. I completely lost the ability to speak. I told him I had the same guitars as he’d just used on stage, and when he asked me which ones, the words completely went out of my head and there was a huge pause, and then his wife tapped his shoulder and he wandered off.

Working in a very busy bar in the West End when I was trying to pay my way through drama school. I had to dance in a cage in a vest and cycling shorts to Venus by Bananarama, Greased Lightnin’ and Y.M.C.A. every night. It was excruciating.

Arrogance, bullying, meanness – just try to be kind, it’s not difficult.

A couple of years ago we moved to East Sussex – I had been living in London for 35 years – and couldn’t work out why I kept waking up and thinking, what’s that sound? It was actually silence.

Live in the moment. Enjoy life because time cruelly speeds up as you get older and becomes scarily finite.