Quotes from Eddie Marsan

I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so.

I'm very blue collar myself. So it was easy for me to embody that in a sense. It's much harder for me to embody Norrell than it is to embody Terry Donovan.

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.

What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.

When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.

If you're confident, then it helps you live up to your potential, but if you believe because you went to a certain school it means you're entitled to have a particular career, you'll fall flat on your face eventually.

The hardest thing to do and most miserable films are comedies.

Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.

I know what I try to do. I try to be professional, turn up, not make too much fuss, do the job.

'Ray Donovan' is very dark and very serious. As actors will tell you, the darker and more serious the material, the more jokes that go around set. It's a counterbalance.

The characters in 'Ray Donovan' are not very articulate - we're the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A.

With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role.

I love the fact that everyone's trying to be good-looking in L.A. - then I turn up and I get work.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. 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.

I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.

I didn't do well at school, and I don't have lots of academic reference points.

I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there.

If your character doesn't express himself or doesn't feel confident expressing himself, then you don't express yourself.

As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.

I've got four kids - I unblock a toilet every day.

Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.

I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me.

I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish.

When I was doing fringe theatre, my ambition was to do repertory. When I got to rep it was to do national theatre; then it was t,o get a couple of parts in television. I never had this great desire to overreach myself. I was too busy enjoying acting. I was just obsessed with it.