Mark Strong

As a 16-year-old, I had come through the difficulty of early teens, where you are just raging against the world. I was feeling more like a young man but only equipped as a child. You can’t drive. You can’t buy your own stuff. You haven’t really got your own money, but you want to be independent. I was saved by sport. I grew in height, put on weight, got really fit so I was able to play rugby and basketball and swam for my county. I was at a state boarding school in Norfolk. My theory about boarding school is that it’s fine as long as you’re visible. If you haven’t got a talent, you’re not incredibly bright, brilliant at music, incredibly funny, or in my case, good at sport, you can become invisible and that boarding school environment can be awful. But I had a good time.

So I was