'Born Free' was the first film I ever saw. I just fell in love with the idea of people having that bond with a wild animal.
An awful lot of people have childhood memories of holidays in Cornwall, and the holidays are old-fashioned and hugely successful. You stick a child and a dog on one of the beaches, and they just light up; they just love it.
Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence, like I'd picked the right thing to do in life.
Really, for an actor, it's all about remembering a lot of stuff - and keeping the moustache on.
We have a fair on our farm every year - a gymkhana and a dog show and a funfair and a heavy-horse show. It was my idea. Be careful what you wish for - it's a monster.
My dad was a different bloke to me and not very nice to my mum, although I never judge him. If you did, you'd become one of those people who is all-consumed by a fault in their past. And I haven't got the time for it.
My earliest memory is a picnic in the park near our house, which was next to Wimbledon Common. Why on earth we went to a park when we lived so near the common is a mystery, but it had formal gardens and lawns - perhaps it was that very difference that took my parents there.
When people asked me, 'What are you going to do?' I'd say, 'I'm going to be an actor,' without really thinking about it. And I started acting without really thinking about it. I only thought about it properly a bit later.
I think people need entertaining, and they like being entertained. That's all I do. I don't do anything important; I just work in entertainment.
You do get into a groove, which is great, when you get to act with the same people a lot. Like with Caroline Catz - it's like a duet: you're like a duo jamming together.
I tell you, I've always been quite physical about acting. I've always felt about for the shape of someone or the deportment, for better or worse. Sometimes I think I've done it disastrously, and other times, when I'm not thinking about it so much, less disastrously, but I can't seem to control it much.
In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting - to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it - it's like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.
As first and foremost a character actor, I've always resisted the temptation to cure any of the people I've played or make them lovable in any way; you've just got to celebrate them for what they are.
Nobody just flops a complete 'Doc Martin' script on the desk. They all have to be taken apart and all the apologizing taken out. Because it's hard to have a protagonist that doesn't really like anyone and nobody really likes him; it's a hard premise to start from.
They're so generous, the American fans. They send money to the various charities I support. I tried to raise a little bit of money to send to Nepal, and they were straight in with thousands of dollars.
We keep horses. I have to keep working.
It's so fantastic that Prince William has championed African wildlife. He's putting his back into it - and one thing the royal family is brilliant at is getting people to cough up.
Unlike my mother, who was unashamedly delighted when I decided to become an actor, I always feel that my father, had he lived longer, might have been a touch disapproving of some of my career - I think he might have tutted a bit at 'Men Behaving Badly.'
I found out when I was 18 that Dad had left my mother and the family before he realised he was ill and then died. When I asked Mum about it, she just sort of shrugged it off and said she'd thought I knew about it all along. Of course I hadn't, though I'm sure she must have been desperately unhappy at the time.
What I do know is that I love the whole idea of family, even the word itself.
