"I'd love to play some kind of fop." — Robert Carlyle

The quality of TV drama nowadays is getting better and better. They've had to invent a new term for it: 'high-end television.'

To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate.

I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I'm doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn't work I can go back to what I know's already there.

I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.