A friend of mine, Andrew, bought a house in Slough 10 years ago. I was between homes, having just split up with a girlfriend in Crouch End, so I moved into a spare room in May 1998. I ended up staying six years.

I first lived in the town in 1993, after leaving Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead. I was on the dole and it was easy to find a place on housing benefit; plus, my main group of friends were in nearby Windsor. I spent six months in Slough then, and vowed never to go back, but best-laid plans and all that.

The house, in Montem Lane, was an Edwardian, five-bedroom end-of-terrace. It was yellow-brick with a double-bay window and a big garden. When Andrew, a builder, took it on, it was a derelict B&B; he did it up and rented out the rooms. I started off in the box room, for about £30 a week, and worked my way up to the best room in the house for £70.

I didn’t have any possessions at the time – I slung down my duvet, put my clothes on the floor and just started living. The small room wasn’t conducive to romance, but whenever people moved out, I’d get a better room. Once I got to what you might call the palatial suite, things were great. I was extremely single and enjoying life. All I had was a television, a corner sink, rather ill-conceived drapes nailed on the wall and clutter stacked up. At one point, there were 200 scripts in the built-in cubbyholes, which never got dusted.

I don’t want to slag off Slough too much, but I was once woken up at 3am by a shooting, although I think it was just a cap gun. One Christmas, a guy threw a brick through our window. My flatmate managed to throw something at him and he ran off.

I grew to have a strange kinship with the town, and I had some good times at that house. It was full of young people – there were three genetic scientists there for a while – and we all rubbed along together pretty well. I’m still friends with most of them.

A couple of us got arrested once for drunkenly trying to steal the hands off the townhall clock, which was opposite our house. You had to jump from Porta-kabins onto a low roof, then shin up a drainpipe. The police had obviously seen us on CCTV; they turned up pretty quickly and clotheslined us to the ground.

Slough saw me go all the way from being on the dole to working with Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice. Not bad. Things started happening quite quickly after I moved in. I’d done a play, Journey’s End, at the King’s Head theatre in Islington, north London, which was well received; from that, I got a small part in The Invention of Love at the National; then, in 1998, I got picked up by ICM, one of the biggest talent agencies in London. Within a year of joining them, I did three or four films, then My Family.

It got to a stage when I was working abroad a lot, so I wasn’t at the house much. I remember going off to film The Four Feathers in Morocco during 2000. It had rained nonstop for months, and I was in my room, trying to figure out what to pack, when half the ceiling caved in on my luggage. There had been a leak, and the ceiling missed me by inches. I repaired the roof when I came back – I’m pretty good at all that, as I used to work for the building company that Andrew’s dad owned before I started earning decent money. More than anything, though, I destroyed the place: we played cricket in the garden and smashed the glass in the conservatory, so I had to do a bit of reputtying.

Having a garden was great: we had barbecues and hung up a hammock I’d bought in Thailand; we mowed the lawn and made apple pies from the fruit of our own trees. The conservatory had a vine growing in it and we used to eat out there in summer.

I didn’t think I’d be at the house so long, I was just lazy. Even when I could afford to buy my own place, I didn’t feel grown-up enough. I kept thinking that house prices were rising too much and I’d wait until they dropped – they never did, obviously. It took me until 2005, but I’ve got two houses now: one in Windsor and one in Cornwall.

The only reason I left Montem Lane was because Andrew sold the house. I was filming in Venice and had to get my father to empty my room, which he wasn’t best pleased about. In fact, he gave me a bill for £75 – he said it took him a day and a half to clear, there was so much rubbish.

London is a great city, but on the two occasions I’ve lived there, I’ve found it too claustrophobic, probably because I grew up in the country. Where I live now, in Windsor, there is so much space, and it’s only 40 minutes by train into town. Slough is only a mile and a half away, but I think I’ve done there now.

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