Adrian Lester

“As an actor playing a role, you are asked to visit certain sides of yourself day after day, night after night. If the portrayal requires you to feel some powerful, negative emotions, then once the curtain comes down or the director shouts cut, elements of these feelings will be left with you.”

“I love doing theatre and musicals, but when we start shooting 'Hustle' we film two episodes concurrently, with the scenes out of sequence. Knowing where you are in the intricate plots at any one moment is quite - how shall I put this? - challenging.”

“There was more fuss made about Colin Powell being made general in America than there is about Othello being a general in the play.”

“We need to continue to make sure that we are completely inclusive when looking for our audiences.”

“The appeal of 'Hustle' has always been that the con artists are actually very moral - we've simply made the villains the heroes, and the good guys always come out on top.”

“When I stand back and look at people I was at drama school with, and think of how good they were, yes, I do have to pinch myself. I know I've been lucky. But when I get an audition, I haven't got the job, I've only got the opportunity - and when I've got the job, there's a lot of hard work and bloody mindedness yet to come.”

“Normally on stage you don't get a second take, the song is the song and you can't go, 'Oh you know what, that was a bit rough, I'll go back to the beginning and do it again' - if only we could!”

“There's always a subtle shift that happens in any play I've done that's come to New York, or that's toured, even. The audiences pick up on very much the same things as the London audiences, but there are subtle differences and shifts.”

“I loved 'Doomsday' because I got a chance to do a bit of action, a bit of running and jumping, kicking the bad guys around.”

“I want to play different people all the time.”

“I've never worried about what my body looked like, I've been more concerned about what it can do, but since I've turned 40 that's changed a bit. I don't play Mr Rippled Muscly Guy anyway, so I'm off the hook in that sense.”

“There are certain actors who, when they appear in a drama, you know exactly what you're going to get. That's not me - if that were my career, I'd find it boring.”

“Some directors will tell you what to do: stand here, walk over there, sit down. That is the most basic kind of approach, like directing traffic.”

“I was an Englishman in New York playing a New Yorker... I had to be very careful with my accent.”

“I believe we are moving towards a utopia where pretty much any actor can play anything - soon we'll get to a point where the race and class and gender of the actor will not matter and that has changed since I left drama school in 1989.”

“I think the best characters are people you're not sure of, that you keep on going: 'God, I hate that person,' but you can see why they do what they do. Overall, it's much more interesting to play someone who's not nice.”

“What marks me getting home is when I've completely unpacked.”

“The Undeclared War' is one of those series that points at something that should concern us all.”

“I don't believe in gods or doctrines. I have a more humanistic approach.”