Richard Griffiths

“I've always hated the way I looked, and I've never complained about my brains.”

“I wouldn't inflict my naked body on any paying audience.”

“It's not that I'm sick of the theater, don't get me wrong. I'm just tired of the commitment.”

“Winning is something you've dreamed about and hoped for, so that when you get there it's no big deal. But if you lose, you're gutted, and the gutted sense just goes on, and I know what that's like, because I've been having that gutted feeling since 1979.”

“I've had a year out of work, more, and just toughed it out. There are those who think that all actors are overpaid. I beg to differ.”

“Actors do have good and bad sides. It's because the passage down the birth canal distorts the face. People born by caesarean section are more symmetrical.”

“I know I have this kind of teaching element in me, but I don't want to become a 'teacher of theater' because that would formalize something that I'd much rather keep casual.”

“I don't think I'd live in London unless you paid me. Nine figures would be nice.”

“I hate being the subject of photographs.”

“If I had my way, all actors over 55 would be issued a 3-lb. wet salmon with which to slap the face of every young, beautiful, successful upstart.”

“Some bloke came up to me in Tesco a couple of years ago at 11:30 pm and said: 'Excuse me, would you mind telling my son here that you're Uncle Vernon?' I said: 'Get a grip. It's 11:30 at night - what's he doing out of bed? I'm not here to entertain people at this time of night.”

“I like playing Vernon Dursley in 'Harry Potter,' because that gives me a license to be horrible to kids. I hate the odious business of sucking up to the public.”

“I've got this terrible hernia. People think it's a fat gut, but it's not.”

“Some actors don't mind it. Those who are pretty. They think it's nice to be looked at because they are nice to look at. I appreciate that. I'm very happy to salute that aspiration. But I don't like the way I look so I don't like being photographed. I become defensive.”

“Every time I've talked about my family in the past, people have ended up getting upset. So I said to my friends and family: 'I shan't refer to you at all, and there's nothing for you to get upset about. There's the deal.'”

“I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.”

“If I were dictator, I'd have a catch-all crime of disrespect.”

“When I see David Attenborough talking about how chimps live, big apes, I just remember my dad and the way he'd look at you. He couldn't speak, but everything else about him was, 'This is us, a family.' Relationships are just as intense as they are for people who can speak. Probably more so.”

“My father taught me things about body language that psychologists have been catching up with ever since. He always knew when I was lying, because my posture was all wrong.”

“I went from being a beanpole - like a normal kid of the 1950s - and exploded. The weight piled on and didn't stop until into my adulthood.”