Matthew Macfadyen Quotations

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.

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.

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.

I've worried more and more as the years have gone on. The more you're seen to be doing well, the more stress there is. You feel you ought to consider things more, and be more fussy - there's further to fall. All these little worries.

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.

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

Apart from earning an awful lot of money, why would you go to Hollywood?

I was quite a shy child. I would get terribly nervous and throw up before my birthday party. And then I would be fine. I feel the same now. I get nervous, then it's fine.

No one will guide you in the right direction, in the end you have to learn for yourself. You have to grow up yourself.

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