Quotes

As I get older, the more I don't want my life to be emotionally out of balance in the way it was in my twenties.

I've done some bits of shockingly bad TV that have never been shown, or at least I hope they've never been shown... Please don't dig them out!

I'm still very much about being an actor. That's why I'm not married with kids.

At a party in L.A., I met this middle-aged gentleman who I was talking to for ages when I asked, 'So, what do you do?' Turns out I was speaking to legendary music producer 'Quincy Jones', who worked on Michael Jackson's hits. And there was little old me rattling on - I was so embarrassed.

I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp.

What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - it's relevant to my life as an actor and as a man.

Even though momentarily I thought about being a doctor, I was always involved in theatre and did a drama degree. I just didn't have the guts to go, 'Yes, I'm going to be an actor,' until I was probably 21.

Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I've some other reference for extreme experience that isn't me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It's a way of controlling the uncontrollable.

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world.

I've not been distracted by a long-running TV show or visits to America for pilot season.