People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.
From Colin Firth
Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.
My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.
People coming up and saying something nice is always welcome. But when you're being secretly photographed, that's not so nice. I would rather shake hands with someone and exchange a few words than take a selfie.
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.
The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well.
One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.
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