His career, he says, has been “a slow climb. I started late, and it’s taken 20 years”. He joined a circus in Budapest straight out of his school in Coventry – he grew up in the Midlands - to get his equity card. He says he can still vividly remember the smell of the elephants and being permanently hungry from his circus days. He then worked in musical theatre before going to drama school in London and joining the RSC. But he says his experience of trying to win bigger roles convinced him to alter course. “You fight for certain roles and you realise they’re being filled by television and film actors, because theatre is constantly fighting for survival and they need names and faces and ticket sales. So I remember actively making the decision, ‘I’ve gotta go and make a name for myself, in television or film, so that I can then go back and do those theatre roles that I want.’ But then you lose track of it, because it rolls and rolls.”