However please note the cast will have a week's break from 2nd to 9th February

During a break from filming "Don't say a word" (with Micheal Douglas), and hanging around his hotel room in New York, Sean went to a bookshop and bought himself a copy of Macbeth. Sean admits that it was a role he's rather hankered after, and after reading the play again was "just blown away by it" Sean rang his agent to see if there was anyway that the role of Macbeth could be made to happen.

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It's a role he's been thinking about for some time now. "It's impossible to have an overview of Macbeth," he explains, "because everything the man does, he does instantly. He lives completely and totally in the moment and then he suffers for it. His imagination races, he begins hallucinating and doesn't sleep for days. I love the juxtaposition of all these really strong emotions - the wild imagination, the massive mood swings, the ambition, the guilt and remorse - they're all thrown into a pot and together it's quite a potent brew." He stops himself mid-flow, laughing his cracking laugh, acknowledging his inadvertent lapse into an appropriate witch-like metaphor. "It's a part I suppose deep down I've always wanted to play, but until recently I didn't dare to imagine it might be possible."

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"I've been thinking about this role for the last 20 years and I really want to try and give it a shot." Due to the various work commitments of the proposed cast, not least his own, it's taken two years for the production to come to fruition. But on 14 November his dream of playing Macbeth on a West End stage (Albery Theatre) will finally become a reality.

The new production, directed by Ed Hall and co-starring Samantha Bond as Lady Macbeth, is set against a backdrop of a 'non-specific war-torn republic'. "It's somewhat similar to Kosovo, with various warlords vying for position, and it's quite an ambivalent style with not much space for ornamant and indulgence."

Because it's a 'timeless' production as opposed to something incongruously modern, it's more swords and leather jackets than guns and Armani suits. "The set is also very interesting and adds to the claustrophobia that the play dwells in," says Sean.

Sean won't be adopting a Scottish voice for Macbeth. "Because the play itself is timeless and the location isn't placeable, I think it should be the same with the voice. There are qualities in a northern accent that are quite similar to a Scottish one in that it is very strong, very flat and powerful, and I don't want to lose those particular elements of the dialect. I just want to do something unobtrusive that isn't distracting

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