I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.
My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.
I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube.
The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity!
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.
There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.
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.
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.
I turn down invitations to events where I know there will be politicians.
Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.
I think it's not misplaced in 'Doctor Who' to have someone who is little bit edgy and maybe a little volatile and dangerous.
I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.
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.
There are only a handful of really good TV programmes, and I'm blessed to be in one of them.
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 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.
I've lost count of the times I've been asked to 'be' Malcolm Tucker: to go on a political program on television, presumably in order to be the character and give opinions as him.
I don't go to pubs.
For all I know, my grandfather was a bank robber in Kilsyth.
