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" As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself. "

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" If you're confident, then it helps you live up to your potential, but if you believe because you went to a certain school it means you're entitled to have a particular career, you'll fall flat on your face eventually. "

Eddie Marsan

Face

You

Live

" I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish. "

" The hardest thing to do and most miserable films are comedies. "

" If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do. "

" I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. "

" When I was a struggling actor, I worked for a party company. One of my friends from school was working for an advertising agency, and I turned up to one of his company's parties dressed as an alien to collect tickets on the door. "

" I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there. "

Eddie Marsan

Green

Love

" I could not be one of those actors who stays in character all day long. I'd go mad. "

Eddie Marsan

Day

Long

" I've got four kids - I unblock a toilet every day. "

" You turn up on set, and somebody who has come out of Oxford, has done a BBC course, is telling you how to act. You think, 'Do me a favour. Go and make a coffee.' "

" I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing. "

" I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so. "

" I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat. "

" I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me. "

" I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me. "

Eddie Marsan

Gay

Never

" I know what I try to do. I try to be professional, turn up, not make too much fuss, do the job. "

" 'Ray Donovan' is very dark and very serious. As actors will tell you, the darker and more serious the material, the more jokes that go around set. It's a counterbalance. "

" I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them. "

" I'm used to playing characters who have a lot to say but don't know how to say it. "

" Art is the job of the privileged. "

" I wanted to work with Bryan Singer because I like his films. "

Eddie Marsan

Wanted

Singer

" When I think of character actors, I think of Spencer Tracy; I think of Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall. When I was a young lad watching films, my eyes were on them - watching 'On the Waterfront,' my eyes are on Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, not on Brando. "

" I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't. "

" I'm not a great fiction reader. I love history. I love history and philosophy. "

" As children, we all hold on to the myth of omnipotence. Comics are successful because kids identify with superheroes. They'll read a book or watch a TV programme and say, 'I'm that guy.' And that guy is always the one in control. "

" I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.' "

" I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking. "

Eddie Marsan

Job

Camera

" I have my career and my family, and that's it. "

Eddie Marsan

Career

Family

" The characters in 'Ray Donovan' are not very articulate - we're the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A. "

Eddie Marsan

You

Worst

" I knew what kind of actor I was going to be, and I looked for inspiration to people like Alec Guinness, Cyril Cusack, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent. I looked at them and thought, 'They play human beings as they really are.' "