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" '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. "

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" 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. "

Eddie Marsan

Worry

Great

Wife

" 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 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. "

" 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 listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker. "

" 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. "

" I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film. I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film because I think it was a one-off before it was imitated a hundred times. "

" 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. "

Eddie Marsan

Think

Stars

" I come from a council estate in Tower Hamlets, and by no means am I the only person who has done well - one of my friends is head of year in a great school in Twickenham. Another is a writer; another is an artist, a musician. "

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

" I'm like a mechanic. If you break down and phone the AA, they'll come to you whether it's raining or snowing. That's what an actor should do. "

" You can't write a screenplay if you've been doing a zero-hours contract. Which means that the people who write drama, the people who commission dramas, and the people who direct dramas all come from a small circle of society. "

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

" 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. "

" Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder. "

" Major film stars tend to do a film and then have a couple of months off. I'm not a major film star; I'm a jobbing actor. "

" 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. "

" I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. 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. "

" It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence. "

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

" Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I'm not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it's as a craftsman. "

" 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

" 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'd love to play a Bond villain. Yeah, I'd love to play a Bond villain. Everyone always says this to me; they always say, 'You've got to be a Bond villain', 'We're going to make you a Bond villain...' But they've never, ever approached me, I've never had a whiff of it. I think I'd love to play a Bond villain; I'd have great fun. "

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

" 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. "

" Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from. "

Eddie Marsan

Think

Acting

" I didn't do well at school, and I don't have lots of academic reference points. "

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