If you look at Shakespeare's history plays, what the setting of monarchy allows is this extraordinary intensification of emotions and predicament.

I would say L.A. is more polite than London - it's a very careful place. People talk a lot in code.

I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.

After my grandfather's plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.

I did a Christmas movie where I played Mrs. Claus because my children's favorite movie of all time was a Christmas movie that my father did in which he played Santa, and I was like, 'How often do they make a movie about Mrs. Claus?' and, 'My kids will love this.'

As an only child, particularly if you're a boy without a father, you have to work out for yourself who you're going to be. And I do think, over the years, I've developed a need for control.

Being a father to my family and a husband is to me much more important than what I did in the business.

Instead of getting swept up in a whirlwind of banal 'holiday' parties, useless gift exchanges and harried shopping, my family tries hard to use the weeks of Advent to prepare our hearts and home in meaningful ways for the Prince of Peace.