I wouldn't want to leave it so long before doing a play again, I get very stolid and sluggish if I do too much telly.
From Matthew Macfadyen
It's a real skill to be able to publicise yourself.
I don't feel like a romantic lead; I guess I feel more like a character actor.
Nobody's just arrogant. I've met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they're vulnerable - that that hauteur or standoffishiness is because they're pedaling furiously underneath.
People like to think that actors are terribly worried about ghosts of other actors in the parts they play. But you just have to get on with it.
I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.
It must be odd, being recognizable. I would hate to lose that anonymity.
Some British actors are snobby about telly, and I don't understand that.
Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested.
As much as I long for a sort of security and consistency sometimes, I do enjoy sort of being busted around. I really don't know what's happening sometimes next week, let alone this year.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives