He had his first attack 10 years ago on Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts. The problem recurred in subsequent movies, but came to a head in his last film, Music and Lyrics, with Drew Barrymore in 2007. Incredibly, for an actor of his calibre and experience, he had developed a "sort of phobia of close-ups".

So his withdrawal from the big screen was a conscious decision to get his mojo back. "I thought: 'Do I really want to put myself through that hell again, just in case I get any of those panic attacks'," he says. "It's absurd. As long as there's another person in the scene, I'm fine. "It's just when it's me by myself, especially my head, I don't like it. Sometimes it can get really intense. I sort of can't breathe, can't think."

Of Music and Lyrics, he adds: "I spent most of that film taking tranquilisers." It took a series of visits to doctors and phone calls from director Marc Lawrence, his collaborator on Music and Lyrics and Two Weeks Notice, to draw him out of his self-imposed exile.