It's funny in the U.K., where I'm not really known because I never did a soap. My English cousins in the Lake District think I'm not a real actor because they've never seen me in 'Home and Away' or 'Neighbours.'
Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament.
I often think that the last holiday is the greatest, but then some really stand out in my mind. One of the best was one my wife and I had in the Lake District. We stayed in a B&B and walked around the countryside for two weeks.
Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District.
The country is an archipelago of lakes,--the lake-country of New England.
Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.
I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth.
I don't know a lot about mountaineering. I once went walking in the Lake District with the legendary climber Chris Bonington and had to have emergency physio afterwards to regain sensation in my thighs.
If you make a movie in the UK you've got to embrace the weather with open arms... We got some of the most amazing weather as well. It's maybe why some of these places, like the Lake District, don't get filmed in so much. If you were trying to make it look like some kind of chocolate box image of England you'd be there all year waiting for the sun to come out.
Our concept of a family holiday was going to a guest house in the Lake district or Wales, where walking was part of the holiday.
