I went to art school in the days when it was what you did if you didn't want to be like everybody else. You wanted to be strange and different, and art school encouraged that. We hated the drama students - they were guys with pipes and cardigans.
— Peter Capaldi
I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and certainly some of the food would have been appealing, but the disease and hygiene would have worried me.
A little showbiz never hurt anyone.
What you're doing is acting with yourself. Well, I'm my favourite actor, so in a way it's quite straightforward for me.
I don't want to find myself at the age of 60 waiting by the telephone for someone else to decide if I am capable of being in what might be a crummy TV production.
When I was acting, I was always asking abut the mechanics of filmmaking. I decided I would learn what everyone on set was doing, so I would feel less threatened.
It's weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat.
At 17 years old, STG took me under its wing and shared its resources and wisdom with me, even allowing me to take part in a show at the Edinburgh Festival. Without STG and the Ramshorn Theatre, I would not have found access to the world of drama that I later made my profession.
'Doctor Who' belongs to all of us. Everybody makes 'Doctor Who.'
Scottish men of a certain age have a black response to almost everything as a measure of how sophisticated they are. I have a very long fuse that eventually explodes after building up a nice head of steam, although it's only happened three times - usually at work when someone takes me for granted.
Being asked to play 'The Doctor' is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can't wait to get started.
I'm not an extravagant man. The fact that I can have a coffee out whenever I want still makes me feel grateful.
My childhood growing up in that part of Glasgow always sounds like some kind of sub-Catherine Cookson novel of earthy working-class immigrant life, which to some extent it was, but it wasn't really as colourful that.
I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things.
I'm not terribly well read. My wife forces books into my hands and insists I read them, which I'm grateful to her for. She made me read 'War and Peace.' The whole thing. It was amazing, but I had to hide it. You can't walk round reading 'War and Peace' - it's like you're in a comedy sketch and you think you're smart.
I'm so lucky to have worked with Burt Lancaster, who I remember was one of the first people I'd heard swearing in a really interesting way.
I don't remember 'Doctor Who' not being part of my life, and it became a part of growing up, along with The Beatles, National Health spectacles, and fog. And it runs deep. It's in my DNA.
The difference between movies and TV is that in TV you have to have a trauma every week, but that event may not be the biggest event in the characters' lives.
What annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands. It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow.
I never really think of acting and directing as being separate; they are just different expressions of the same thing.
One of the very, very exciting things I have found here in L.A. is that no one talks to you about being Scottish. Whereas, if you are in London and you are trying to put films together and be a film-maker, there is a kind of unspoken sense that, if you are Scottish, you have something to overcome or else you cannot really do that project.
Every viewer who ever turned on 'Doctor Who' has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.
I haven't played Doctor Who since I was 9 on the playground.
Hollywood producers aren't going to say, 'Get me that swearing, grey-haired, headless chicken. We need him for our new 'High School Musical' movie!'
I don't like parties. There was never a party I was at where I didn't wish I was somewhere else.
A girl once came to my beery flat in Kensal Green, opened the blinds and cooked me breakfast. I married her.
I hated improvisation because in my early days as an actor, improvisation meant somebody had just come down from Oxford and they were doing a play above a pub in Kentish Town, and the biggest ego would win.
The Americans just have a great sort of wit about them.
Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.
I was always admiring people who seemed to conduct themselves with ease in the world. Maybe that's a great gift to give your kids if you can do that. Because they can move through the world without neurosis, this anxiety about everything, which our own parents gave us.
I'm pretty good for an old geek.
I destroyed all my geek stuff because I didn't want to be a geek, and I regret it to this day. Consumed in the geek bonfire of the vanities was a collection of autographs and letters from Peter Cushing, Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, the first Doctor Whos, actual astronauts, and many more.
The biggest thing I have realized was that you have to choose your collaborators very carefully, and that not everybody can like you. The process of filmmaking is so difficult, there's no point in doing it unless you can do it the way you want.
I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty.
STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow's rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.
Even though I am a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan, I've not played him since I was nine. I downloaded old scripts and practised those in front of the mirror.
I've been really terrible in a lot of things because I learned by making mistakes. That makes you a different kind of actor, because you have to figure out for yourself what you do.
I can't imagine I'll be the new George Clooney. That's not really in the cards.
Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.
The only time I've tried to make plans, the cosmic sledgehammer has intervened and something else has happened. You just have to wait and see what comes your way, so that's what I do.
What I've learnt being an actor is that you've got to be lucky. I got less lucky, and nobody was interested. If a part came up, it would be for the main corpse's friend's brother who was having problems with his marriage.
