When I first met Sam, I thought he was handsome, cool and weirdly shy. He was always a rare combination of suave and down-to-earth: this great, democratic guy with no bullshit. I just loved the way he seemed to cruise through life. He had such ease about him.

Acting was just one chunk of his life: there was always a lot of other stuff going on. He couldn’t wait to get back to his farm and his wine and his animals. I remember when we were making Merlin in 1998, he kindly took me out for lunch. We had a really delicious bottle of pinot noir, and he said that was what he was aiming for with his winery Two Paddocks.

Then, in 2015, on And Then There Were None, he brought some bottles of his own pinor noir to give people. He told us to give it a good couple of hours to breathe after we opened it. I was very unrestrained. I thought, “He can’t mean that.” So after 45 minutes, I had a taste and it was filthy. I thought: Oh my God, how am I gonna tell Sam his wine is awful? I’ll have to lie and I can’t do that. Anyway, I left the bottle sitting around, and after two hours I had another sip and of course it was completely delicious. I never told him about that. He’d have said it served me right.

In 2020 we worked together on Rams in Australia. I was delighted, but in the end I didn’t spend much time with him because he was in almost every scene and I had a lot of time off. So I did lots of exploring the region, driving hundreds of miles discovering new places. Near the end of the shoot, he asked me what I’d been up to. When I told him he said: “Oh, good for you!” He liked that I hadn’t just hung around the hotel or the local area. That was high praise from Sam and it meant a lot to me. He was absolutely one of those people from whom you seek approval.

I never visited his farm, but I think there was a time when it was under consideration that he might name an animal after me. I’m not sure which species, but he seemed to lavish a lot of attention on the ducks, so I wouldn’t have minded it being one of those. It was lovely to know so many people were affected by Sam; I think he got a whole new audience on social media during Covid as people discovered his life on the farm. That was delightful.

He was a guy for whom it felt like time was expanding, and I thought his courage about mortality – saying he didn’t worry about that – was fabulous. I think, and hope, he had a great deal of fun. Sam’s felt like a full life to be celebrated.