Matthew Macfadyen

“There's always a concern as an actor that you'll be boring unless your character is swinging from a chandelier.”

“What's exciting is there's a curtain that divides the audience from this other world. You want to see behind.”

“You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.”

“I try to be fussy about the parts I play. I think that's quite prudent, it means you're stretching different muscles, and you're scaring yourself by doing something which is out of your comfort zone.”

“Apart from earning an awful lot of money, why would you go to Hollywood?”

“It must be odd, being recognisable. I would hate to lose that anonymity. It happened for a while with 'Spooks.' No one notices me now.”

“It's a real skill to be able to publicise yourself.”

“I think people ought to do what they feel useful at the time. If I do things because I ought to do them, I switch off.”

“I have felt some twinges recently, about parts I wanted to play that I may be getting too old and fat to do. 'Hamlet,' for example - maybe that's gone. I would love to play Richard II.”

“Nobody's just arrogant. I've met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they're vulnerable - that that hauteur or standoffishiness is because they're pedaling furiously underneath.”

“Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested.”

“I was quite a shy child. I would get terribly nervous and throw up before my birthday party. And then I would be fine. I feel the same now. I get nervous, then it's fine.”

“I can't throw books away. My wife is always telling me to get rid of some.”

“I think it sits quite happily with me, the condition of being an actor. I see some people getting quite eaten up with it, with the insecurities. There are times when I long for continuity and stability, but I also love the idea of not knowing what I'll be doing next - or even if I'm going to work.”

“The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'”

“I love TV and I love making films and I love doing plays. I feel very lucky to be able to do all three.”

“You never know how films are going to do and it is daunting if I think about it.”

“I've worried more and more as the years have gone on. The more you're seen to be doing well, the more stress there is. You feel you ought to consider things more, and be more fussy - there's further to fall. All these little worries.”

“Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.”

“People like to think that actors are terribly worried about ghosts of other actors in the parts they play. But you just have to get on with it.”