Tom Baker

“One longs to be funny, to make people laugh. Laughter is such a sign of approval, isn't it?”

“My capacity as a monk was to passionately believe utter nonsense, and when you're an actor you have to do the same thing. Also, Christianity used to have a lot to do with self-loathing and an acceptance of criticism and things like that which is terribly important for actors.”

“It's funny, in literature no one ever goes to the lavatory.”

“I think quite often a fate worse than death is life, for lots of people.”

“Well, I think people don't recognise my face because I'm so much older now, but it is astonishing that people can recognise a voice. I do sometimes get recognised, and indeed a lot of people do come and see me.”

“I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success, but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who, it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring.”

“I was never really happy until I became 'Doctor Who'.”

“I used to always be putting my hat on children being photographed and then getting home and discovering I was riddled with lice. That used to happen very, very regularly. I used to get headlice all the time.”

“Not only don't I know who I am, but I'm very suspicious of people who do know who they are. I am sometimes ten or twelve people a day, and sometimes four or five people an hour!”

“I've been involved in one or two successes in classical plays but nothing to touch the excitement and the glamour and the gratification of being a children's hero for so long.”

“Politicians are just Daily Mail journalists writ large, aren't they? They're always telling us what's going to happen, and we know they don't know!”

“I don't watch television. I know better than that.”

“I'm really not an actor of any kind. I've always seen myself as an entertainer, someone who makes people laugh. That's all I've ever wanted to do. 'Doctor Who' has always just been me, really.”

“Most drama in our lives is really rather squalid.”

“We are pre-disposed for fantasy, there is a natural impulse for human beings to want to get off their heads or out of their heads in something in a substance or a drink or an idea or a religion which will comfort them and make life exciting.”

“The thing is I'm very interested in bad taste, as anyone who's ever seen me perform or had dinner with me would know.”

“I think people can believe in anything.”

“Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.”

“I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on crumpet so I was really rather good as Rasputin. And my next catastrophic failure was Macbeth, who I played in the style of a crumpet-lover, and then when Doctor Who came along, I embraced this lunacy, this cloud-cuckoo-land where people had to be convinced by absolute nonsense. I came from a very religious background, so it was easy for me to believe in something I knew nothing about.”

“Lis Sladen was very important to me, you know. When I joined the little world of 'Doctor Who', Lis was already a star.”