I think it's necessary to identify with anything - with any character you play, there's got to be something in common, so you can link up to that person, even if it's like one tiny thing. But it's equally fun to play somebody completely different, and trying to find what that thing is to make it.
Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it.