“Surprise! Surprise! An Academy Award nomination and suddenly you're ou...” — Nigel Hawthorne Quote

Surprise! Surprise! An Academy Award nomination and suddenly you're outed? Did I mind? Oh, very, very much.

I was quite a plain boy. I stayed in work and eeked out a living, bit parts on TV, walk-ons in films, repertory companies.

When you set yourself up to be apart from rest of mankind, you're in danger of crashing further than they ever could. That's the trouble with royalty, after all.

My father was a doctor. I've never been very warm towards doctors.

My father was a Victorian product. He didn't marry until he was over 40. I knew him more as a grandfather than a father. You didn't lie or cheat with him. I would never have defied my father.

When we played Chelsea in North Carolina, the biggest cheer from the 55,000-strong crowd was for me. They had Raheem Sterling, who actually joined Liverpool when I was at the academy there, and Thiago Silva on their bench. It was mental.

Overall, we've lost risk-takers on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. All too often, stars play it safe.

I had to be resilient playing non-League because I was 17 playing against men. I always knew how to beat someone and how to use my body. And that's one thing academy players don't really learn. Because in the academy you're playing against people your age. I was always playing against men.

I'm not privy to the English set-up, but at the academies in Ireland, there is a huge focus on the weights room as opposed to whether they can throw a 10-metre pass on the run. They should be rugby players becoming athletes, not athletes becoming rugby players.