Quotes

I'm great at children's parties! Card tricks, cons, the lingo, the whole misdirection thing.

I loved 'Doomsday' because I got a chance to do a bit of action, a bit of running and jumping, kicking the bad guys around.

For me, learning stuff has always been a voyage of discovery and if it isn't, then I didn't see the point of it.

There's always a subtle shift that happens in any play I've done that's come to New York, or that's toured, even. The audiences pick up on very much the same things as the London audiences, but there are subtle differences and shifts.

I've been in shows that have had bad reviews and they've gone on and sold out and own awards.

My family's goal, really, was to make sure you worked hard and got paid for the job you were doing and that you could keep the job going and keep the money coming in.

By the time I was 14, I started getting paid for my work as an actor. For walk on work as well, because I had an equity card. By then, my family accepted what I was going to do as a really sensible and viable option.

We need to continue to make sure that we are completely inclusive when looking for our audiences.

If talent exists, and it's very young, it needs to be nurtured and given a pathway to walk along before you ask it to support itself. That's how any great society should work.

There's something that happens whenever I see a brilliant show, where I just want to get up on stage.

Normally on stage you don't get a second take, the song is the song and you can't go, 'Oh you know what, that was a bit rough, I'll go back to the beginning and do it again' - if only we could!

Ultimately, I prefer being in front of the camera. I didn't train to be a director and my eye on it is purely a narrative exercise. I deal with the emotions of the characters involved because I'm an actor.

I find it quite hard to sum up a show that's been as much fun as 'Hustle.' The upsetting thing is the thought that I may not have this kind of experience again; working with that group of people and doing something where your energies and efforts result in a show that's truly popular.

If you're in front of an audience and your voice, your mannerism, your pattern of speech, your intellectual approach to the performance tells the audience that you're acting, they will switch off.

When I was in rehearsal in drama school, I would speak things in meter and then never do it again.

You have to promote yourself. And the only way you do that is by saying no to the things you would have said yes to beforehand, and wait for the next thing to come. The only power you have as an actor is to say no.

Every time I've played a role - every time - I've been hit by the same response of 'Oh goodness, that's interesting.'

In our multicultural society, it is inevitable that there will be a prime minister of colour at some point.

At heart, I'm analogue. I'm one of those people who has to buy something if they walk past a stationery shop.

I want to play different people all the time.

I'm not the kind of actor who's going to fit well with a long-running series unless that series offers me the chance to be in new and different situations every week.

With a theatre audience, the suspension of disbelief is much, much greater than on television. With television, people feel much more like they're a fly on the wall.

Never mind that British history is liberally dotted with ethnic minorities; to most scriptwriters they simply don't exist.

I'm not a good cook.

Producers are too ready to second-guess an audience, and they always play it very safe.