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" My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do. "

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" I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face. "

" 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 wouldn't have been interested in making a show just about Hollywood, 'cause I find Hollywood boring. I find people and families very interesting. "

" With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role. "

" My idea is just to do something different each time; the next thing I do has to be completely different to the thing I've done before - that's what I try and do, because you know, I'm an actor, not a film star. "

" Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better! "

" When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything. "

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

" 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 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.' "

" My friends I grew up with were so supportive to me. And I'm not the only one who's done well. "

" I love the fact that everyone's trying to be good-looking in L.A. - then I turn up and I get work. "

" I always think of Gilbert Norrell as being Salieri to Jonathan Strange being Mozart. "

" If your character doesn't express himself or doesn't feel confident expressing himself, then you don't express yourself. "

" The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character. "

" 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. "

" Magic symbolises the subconscious - that part of us that is creative and powerful that we sometimes don't tap into. "

" 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. "

" My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it. "

" 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. "

" I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion. "

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

" I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants. "

" When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13. "

" 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 was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor. "

" 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. "

" When I was doing fringe theatre, my ambition was to do repertory. When I got to rep it was to do national theatre; then it was t,o get a couple of parts in television. I never had this great desire to overreach myself. I was too busy enjoying acting. I was just obsessed with it. "

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

" I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative. "