Matthew Macfadyen Quotes

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.

You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.

I'd auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and I didn't get a place and it was terrifying.

I think I do have a good eye. It's quite liberating, being in a position to read a script and say, 'No.' It's really the only power you have, as an actor.

The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'

You never know how films are going to do and it is daunting if I think about it.

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.

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 don't feel like a romantic lead; I guess I feel more like a character actor.

The lovely thing about being an actor is being anonymous, it's never having to explain yourself. And that's what I find interesting about actors or painters I admire. I don't want to know about their lives.

I can't throw books away. My wife is always telling me to get rid of some.

I just loved the whole idea of being an actor.

I love TV and I love making films and I love doing plays. I feel very lucky to be able to do all three.

My vanity is I'm terribly romantic! But being married is lovely.

I think it sits quite happily with me, the condition of being an actor. I see some people getting quite eaten up with it, with the insecurities. There are times when I long for continuity and stability, but I also love the idea of not knowing what I'll be doing next - or even if I'm going to work.

What's exciting is there's a curtain that divides the audience from this other world. You want to see behind.

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. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

The actor in me would always like to be more dashing, or slimmer, or have nicer hair.

I have felt some twinges recently, about parts I wanted to play that I may be getting too old and fat to do. 'Hamlet,' for example - maybe that's gone. I would love to play Richard II.