Quotes from Roger Allam

I've had some bad reviews, but not as bad as the things I could imagine for myself.

It's important to take risks and challenge yourself. That's why I went into acting, really.

It's lovely going to Oxford, it's very difficult to film there as you're doing a period drama in a city which is very crowded.

I live near a beautiful park, and when I walk around it, the beauty of it can take your breath away. It makes you realize there is something bigger, certainly bigger than me.

That's the thing with acting. There are always loads of people who are more successful, richer, more famous and seemingly able to do anything they want.

My ballroom dancing skills are completely non-existent.

At school I was a disaster academically but being involved in drama helped me to find another pathway into things.

What I loved about Edinburgh was being able to walk to work through a beautiful place.

The acting bug first bit when I went to see 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' at the Old Vic.

When the National Theatre was built, it was a public building. If you wander round that building now, there are bits hived off for people who pay more money. That's happening across the arts.

I was nervous about a Corbyn government, although I would have supported it because a lot of the policies were good. I was far more nervous of a Conservative government but here it is, we've just got to deal with it.

A lot of actors are relatively shy people, surprisingly, so acting is a way of not being shy - and being paid not to be shy.

Watching your children growing up makes you aware of time passing. You think, 'Oh, God, look at them now! He won't be like this for much longer.'

Be ambitious. The great actor, director and playwright Ann Jellicoe commissioned writers like Howard Barker and David Edgar, and put on magnificent, large-scale plays in Dorset that involved the whole community.

For me, acting is like a pool you dive into. If you're lucky, you find what you need, then get out again.

I can do posh.

Of course I would like to be more famous. It offers more career possibilities. But then it can prove restrictive. Plus you get hassled when you go shopping.

I've been saying for about 20 years, 'When am I going to get my cop show?'

It's nice to have the creature comforts of home.

What is nice about doing a long-running show is finding a language that gives it some depth.

With those long American TV contracts you think, 'yes, at the end of that I'd be rich.' But at the same time you feel inside you a kind of death, because I enjoy playing lots of different characters.

It's true you can end up as rich as Croesus but the thing I enjoy about acting is doing lots of different kinds of things.

Try not to worry about embarrassing yourself. That's a lifetime's task.

Opera requires an enormous commitment. You must devote your whole life to producing that extraordinary sound.