Richard Griffiths

“I hated my childhood. It was loathsome. My parents were deaf and dumb. Profoundly so. They could make noises when they were emotionally aroused, but they couldn't form it into speech.”

“I trained as an artist originally, so I know what a nice human body looks like, and I would like to look like that notion, and of course I never will. But I've got past that.”

“Broadway has the most savvy audience anywhere. They see everything and they know their theater. As sophisticated and subtle as you think you can be, the houses you get here will want something finer.”

“I think there are people watching me, and if ever I manage to save £1,000 there's someone saying, 'Oh, we'll invent a tax to take that off him.'”

“I've always turned down stuff where you had to be fat. I may be fat, but that's not why you play a role. If the guy has to be that way, I say get somebody else because I'm not doing any fat acting.”

“Since puberty I've always had this strange awareness that all the keener experiences I would have in my life would happen later than it would to my contemporaries. When it came to the career thing, I never worried about it. It's better if you're still peaking when you're 60, which I feel I am.”

“What can I say? I deal with it. I think I have come to terms with my absolutely hateful and vile childhood. No, I have, really. But I did hate it at the time. I resented it. There were elements of it that were positively Dickensian.”

“I was big and fat and had weird parents.”

“It's been the most astonishing year because I've been having a marvelous adventure, and yet I kind of sympathize with people who have to live in exile, because I've so missed England.”

“My vanity is not remotely physical, it is cerebral. I suppose feeling self-conscious might be a form of vanity, though.”