Timothy Spall

“The older I get, the more I feel that's all we are: a big bunch of feelings and instincts all wrapped up in some brief encounter with intellect.”

“I'm sick of having an opinion on everything. Getting older, you learn all sorts of things you're supposed to, but I feel like it's time, when you get older, through experience, to... I started to feel quite... what's the word? ... intimidated by seeing both sides of everything.”

“If I can't get hold of someone I love, I'll assume they're being tied to a radiator by al-Qaeda rather than their battery's run out. I'm quite a worrier.”

“I don't enjoy the theatre. I don't go. Don't like going in the back door or the front.”

“You're trying to form this human being that will fit the bill, and the human being becomes a hand, and the research is a glove, and you try to bring this character together into the research, mesh it, and create this person that is the sum total of all that endeavor.”

“When I was at school when I was 16, I was in a quandary because I didn't know whether I wanted to join the army - I had this terrible desire to be a tank driver in the Royal Tank Regiment, genuinely - or whether I wanted to go to art college because half of me wanted to be in the army, and the other half of me wanted to be a surrealist.”

“Time itself is talked about as something that is unusual, that there could be a parallel time.”

“You never know what is going to happen to you in life.”

“If one wants to measure oneself by the facile accruement of awards, then I've done very well.”

“I think anything that increases your understanding of the human condition... I think age and life, if you're lucky, makes you think deeper, and the other thing it makes you realize is that you never stop learning, and you never lose your fear of getting it wrong.”

“I do believe in the power of love.”

“I love a cinema with two people in it. Love it! Absolutely love it!”

“Imagination is a beast that has to be put in a cage.”

“As you get older and more thoughtful, you carry stuff with you. Your kids get older, you take on their sorrows, you enjoy their triumphs. Life doesn't always go to plan.”

“In 1996, when I was being treated for leukaemia, at one point I had a vicious infection that was trying to claim me. Mercifully, due to love and expertise, I pulled through.”

“I'm working class, and want people to know I'm not unintelligent and all the other cliches that come with it.”

“I know I work quite hard at making people like me.”

“You're immortal, aren't you, until you get a little peek over the precipice. The thought of death...You're not supposed to start pondering it until you're old. And there's nothing like being told you've got a life-threatening disease to concentrate your mind on that.”

“There's posh character actors. For God's sake, Olivier was one of the greatest character actors in the world. Hamlet, Shylock, Othello - Othello! Whether you like it or not.”

“I know what I like when I see it, but no way have I ever become interested in learning about it.”