Quotes from Eddie Marsan

Private education can give you confidence, which is marvellous; a sense of entitlement isn't.

I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.

If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do.

You turn up on set, and somebody who has come out of Oxford, has done a BBC course, is telling you how to act. You think, 'Do me a favour. Go and make a coffee.'

I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.

My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do.

I knew very early on that I wasn't Brad Pitt.

It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.

When you watch 'Ray Donovan,' you think that it's about Hollywood, about scandal, about stars, and about trying to keep secrets. That's true, but that's also just the means by which you reveal secrets of the people suffering every day life.

As children, we all hold on to the myth of omnipotence. Comics are successful because kids identify with superheroes. They'll read a book or watch a TV programme and say, 'I'm that guy.' And that guy is always the one in control.

My friends I grew up with were so supportive to me. And I'm not the only one who's done well.

There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time.

When I think of character actors, I think of Spencer Tracy; I think of Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall. When I was a young lad watching films, my eyes were on them - watching 'On the Waterfront,' my eyes are on Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, not on Brando.

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, 'You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.' I said, 'What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?'

I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking.

I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.'

You can't write a screenplay if you've been doing a zero-hours contract. Which means that the people who write drama, the people who commission dramas, and the people who direct dramas all come from a small circle of society.

I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me.

Magic symbolises the subconscious - that part of us that is creative and powerful that we sometimes don't tap into.

I'm like a mechanic. If you break down and phone the AA, they'll come to you whether it's raining or snowing. That's what an actor should do.

Art is the job of the privileged.

I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me.

Major film stars tend to do a film and then have a couple of months off. I'm not a major film star; I'm a jobbing actor.