Quotes from Christian McKay

I always wanted to be an independent maverick, writing plays and putting them on myself.

Men love women but, even more than that, men love cars.

It's more difficult playing a real-life person than a fictional character - you can go easy on yourself with a fictional character.

Now I have an agent, a manager, a lawyer, a publicist, all the king's horses and all the king's men.

Like so many people, I only remembered Orson Welles as this huge, fat, bearded figure selling wine in TV commercials. So whenever anyone said I looked like Orson Welles I said that I wasn't that fat, and I would get on a diet, quickly.

Film is limitless, but some stage presentations on film can look too theatrical.

Do I have any potential as an actor? I don't know. I'm still wondering. But acting has kind of taken over.

I'm very happy in my 18th century worker's cottage in Kent and playing my music for the dog-walkers paused outside.

I was always jealous of my violinist friends and cellist friends who traveled with their instruments.

I want to record Goyescas by Granados, which has been a great love of mine since I was a teenager.

I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carrier - to King Lear.

Originally I studied as a musician, a classical pianist. That was my career before I took up acting in my late 20s.

People say to me now, 'Oh, you've given up the piano.' How can you? Music is a virus.