The actor, 51, on swotting at Oxford, running away to clown school and being mistaken for Renée Zellweger
We moved countries every year and a half when I was little. My dad worked for British Airways. I was born in Hong Kong, lived in Zambia and Borneo, and was evacuated when the war started in Beirut.There are photos of me in Abu Dhabi in a little cotton dress made by my mother, watching the camel races with all these women in veils and long black dresses.
When I got to Oxford, my mind exploded. I remember the dangerous sports society abseiling down to rescue a pig’s head from outside the Dean’s room. I was in a one-woman show – The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy – in which she gives herself stigmata. I said: “Can I have real blood?” so the stage manager went to the abattoir, got a bucket of sheep’s blood and poured it all over me. It stank and turned me vegetarian for quite a while.
