A biography for Catherine Tatehasn’t been written yet.
“No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.”
“I was not a 'Doctor Who' fan. As a kid, I thought it was scary and for boys.”
“My mum left my dad when I was six months old, so I don't know him at all. I had no male figures in my life, really. I had my godfather, but he's more like a grandfather, so I was quite sheltered. I've never tried to find my father.”
“I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I was 21. I just kept plugging away. Determined? Yeah, I think I was.”
“Nothing is ever going to be as important or as exciting as a baby. Everyone has their highs and lows, but if you've got that one constant in your life - in my case, a baby - the highs are never going to be as big, and the lows are never going to be as bad.”
“Nothing prompts creativity like poverty, a feeling of hopelessness, and a bit of panic.”
“Any degree of success or achievement for me is only ever a relief. My version of getting carried away is: 'Mmm, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.'”
“When I realised I had a facility for humour, I latched on to it, and it gave me confidence and I built my personality around it. So I subconsciously made myself become the funny one so that would be my label rather than the ginger one or the red-faced one.”
“'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process.”
“How nice it would be to breeze through life and just brush things off. I never read reviews because I hate to lose more than I like to win; I experience negative emotions far greater than positive ones.”
“Few things focus the mind like fear.”
“I don't like tea! Never have, never drunk it.”
“That's the poisoned chalice: when you're shy, people assume you're arrogant.”
“I realised that if you get yourself labeled as the funny one, people don't look any further. I've used that as I've got older. It's controlling: I decide what part of my personality you're seeing. I don't want you to look at me, I really don't. I don't want you to comment on my clothes, my hair or the way I look.”
“I like doing both TV and live stuff, though it's nice to mix it up.”
“By a lot of people's standards, I lived a very privileged life. I never wanted for attention, I never wanted for material things. In some ways, I was probably spoiled because I never had to share. And I was doted on.”
“I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.”
“I'm naturally quite lazy, and I actually think I'm lax about my career. None of my work defines who I am.”