Douglas Hodge

“I had this contract to write songs for people when I was about 18. I don't think any of them were taken up; I was a complete failure at it! But I've kept doing it, writing little songs for myself.”

“The only way I survived at school was by doing impersonations of teachers and pupils. That led to me winning a talent competition when I was 16; the prize was three or four gigs in working men's clubs. I was just showing off: at the time, I thought that's what acting was.”

“I was doing a movie, 'Diana,' and I pulled aside the guy who was making the nose for Naomi Watts and said, 'I'm about to do 'Cyrano.' So he did various Photoshops of different looks that might work. I was really against any kind of 'Pinocchio' theater thing. The way that it's described in the play is this disfigurement.”

“I've always written songs. I'd come home from school and play piano for hours on end, just banging around.”

“The review I've been most offended by came when I played Hamlet. I'd always prided myself on being an 'invisible actor' and not getting in the way of the play. But this review didn't mention me once. That's worse than being insulted.”

“I haven't watched telly for years.”

“In our culture, good looks are so important, and today he'd head straight for a plastic surgeon, but in Cyrano's time, the nose was who he was, and it didn't matter that he was a brilliant poet, a brilliant swordsman, a brilliant man. His nose defined him.”

“If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.”

“I love filming in London. In New York, every street is familiar because you have seen it in a movie. They mythologise their own city. You're forever trying to get down streets that have been blocked off because of shooting. In London, they don't put up with it; they're grumpy.”

“When you sit down and there's nothing, and then you write a song and there's something, that's the most extraordinary feeling.”

“While I was in 'Inadmissible Evidence' at the Donmar, I was mugged at the HSBC ATM on Shaftesbury Avenue. I grabbed one of the men, and when the police arrived, they put both me and him against a wall until they worked out which of us was the criminal.”

“I can't stand interpretation. I think it's one of the great scourges of the theater. I just think, 'Don't get in the way of the play.'”

“It doesn't matter how big the set is or how florid the music is: if it doesn't touch people's hearts, then I don't want to be in it.”

“There's a certain amount of screwball and genius in 'Willy Wonka.'”

“As soon as I walk down that sticky six-mile patterned carpet that welcomes you at Heathrow, I buy the Sunday papers and read the fashion supplements cover to cover. Even though hardly a single word in them seems directed at any male who ever lived, I find them compulsive reading.”

“In England, I've had a more balanced career directing and acting. It can be quite difficult to juggle the two careers.”

“I'm very prescriptive about my routine. Almost nothing changes: I have the same meal - pasta with Bolognese sauce - between shows; the person who dresses me stands on the same side every time; I take the same route to the stage. I'm very OCD about these things, as most actors are.”

“I grew up in Gillingham in Kent, and my dad commuted to Victoria Station every day. I remember travelling in with him one day and the noise, the people, and the heat leaving me wide-eyed and grinning.”

“I've been doing a little project with my 11-year-old son, Charlie: we're canoeing from the source of the Thames to the Houses of Parliament. It's taken us three years so far, and we're only half way.”

“For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.”