I was a mixture of a country boy and a town boy, really. Chichester is a town on the coast of England, and I grew up all along that strip of coast that Chichester branches out into. Sometimes I was living in a house in the country, and sometimes I was living in a town.
Driving from town to town, living in hotels, sometimes not going home during the week because you have an appearance - you really have to be dedicated to do this job.
I am just an old country boy in a big town trying to get along. I have been eating pretty regular and the reason I have been is because I have stayed an old country boy.
I'm a small town boy from a place not too different from Farmville. I grew up with a corn field in my backyard. My grandfather had emigrated to this country when he was about my son's age. My mom and dad built everything that matters in a small town in southern Indiana. They built a family and a good name and a business, and they raised a family.
William Cowper said that God made the country, and man made the town. If it was the opposite, there would be no country; because town can be created from the country but the country cannot be created from the town!
I grew up in Swaledale, in Iowa. Its population was 220 when I was growing up, and it's probably 150 now. I lived in town and sometimes worked on the farms outside of town in the summers.
The iron rail proved a magicians' road. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country.... It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example.
The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it; you're living in the house, and you're living in the town.
It's a fickle town, a tough town. They getcha, boy. They don't let you escape with minor scratches and bruises. They put scars on you here.
If you look at any sitcom that you watch, if it takes place in, say, a small town in Massachusetts, and it's about the dynamics of the people in that town, the showrunner probably grew up in a town like that, witnessed things, and created content.
Sometimes Hollywood is a small town on the West Coast of America at the furthest point from everywhere else, and that can make it a little provincial and insular.
In Zagreb, the Old Town really could be Prague. You go two hours to the coast to Opatija, and you really could be in the South of France, in the Croatian Riviera. And then you head down the coast towards Split, and you get into more Turkish architecture, so you can double Istanbul.
What makes most people comfortable is some sort of sense of nostalgia. I grew up in a small town, and I could count my friends on one hand, and I still live that way. I think I'll die in a small town. When I can't move my bones around a stage any more, you'll find me living in a place that's spread out and rural and spacious.
I live in Cape Town but my favourite holiday destination is Hermanus, a little seaside town about a 90-minute drive away, over the pass and down to the sea, on the sunshine coast. It's where I love to escape to with my wife for a weekend every now and again.
Whatever expectations I had for myself, none of them have come to pass. I grew up thinking I was going to be an actor, which I am. But I thought I'd be a very serious sort of Shakespearean guy going from town to town having sex with various Juliets all over the country.
I grew up in a very small, rural country town, and we didn't really have 'the arts.'
I grew up in a suburban situation and I was constantly looking for the central, the town. I grew up craving. "Where's the town? Where's the people?" You get into a very isolated shell.