James Purefoy

“I think the business affairs people at the studios get some kind of perverse satisfaction in finding the worst hotels for actors to stay in.”

“One of the great things about being an actor is that you have a completely different challenge every few months.”

“Ancient Rome was a violent place.”

“One of the things I like about doing historical films is drawing the line between now and then.”

“I have no problem with television as a genre.”

“I'm not a big fan of patterns. I like the unexpected.”

“I really like playing people who are exciting to watch and who burn brightly.”

“There are only a few TV networks that really invest in production in the way that I think they should. HBO, obviously, is one of them.”

“You know, people aren't watching a network: they're watching cable channels.”

“The East Texas accent is a famously difficult accent to do.”

“All cult leaders are very good at supplying people with what they want and are missing in their lives, so they feel loved and that they belong.”

“I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, 'Rome,' in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.”

“We shot the first season of 'Hap and Leonard' towards the end of the summer in Louisiana, in and around Baton Rouge. If anyone's been to Louisiana or comes from Louisiana, they know what the weather's like down there at that time of year: it's unbearably hot for an Englishman.”

“Airport security is a particular bugbear. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, while I can see that averting terrorism is manifestly important, the measures taken seem, simultaneously, absurd.”

“Joe Carroll had a certain black comedy to him. But I think it's lovely playing a man who, in his heart and soul, is a gentle man. And he's wounded and complicated.”

“When you sign up for a show in the United States, it's six or seven years, generally speaking.”