Quotes from Roger Allam

The things that impress you when you're a child have an incredible influence on your life.

I like the fact that in the theatre nothing is ever finished because you're going to do it all over again tomorrow, whereas in telly once it's wrapped and in the can, that's it.

I remember once about 10 years ago when I was injured, having to rehearse, and I was walking with a stick. And I was terribly touched by the amount of people willing to give up a seat. You often hear that London is so brusque and rude, but the grace with which people negotiate incredibly crowded spaces is something rather nice.

Judi Dench told me to shut up once. I was probably going on and on about something, in the way that I do sometimes, so she was being a good friend.

Practice, learn the lines, work hard, don't be too respectful. Sometimes we can get too hung up on the fact that the material of the play is very finely wrought language.

Many years ago, I was found in compromising circumstances in a dressing room by a security man. The other person was hiding.

I suppose there's a particular kind of efficiency about coming from a theatre tradition. You don't make a fuss, and you're cheap.

In the early 1970s, I took singing lessons with John Hargreaves, a leading singer with English National Opera, when I was home from university.

I played Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing' nearly 30 years ago at the RSC, alongside Susan Fleetwood as Beatrice, and I loved every minute.

As so many people seem to have done, I kind of fell in love with Willy Brandt.

'The Judas Kiss' was really wonderful. I loved that it concentrated on just two events in Wilde's life, and Rupert Everett was top dollar.

Corporate jollies are generally speaking the kiss of death to an audience.

I invented this wonderful death scene for Javert of going down on my knees and then leaning back like a limbo dancer to make it look as if I was falling off a bridge. I did it eight times a week for nearly a year and I've had trouble with my knees ever since - they don't even allow me to jog these days.

Lots of people are astounded that I was in the first cast of 'Les Miserables.' Possibly because I look so incredibly youthful.

I've never been to Barcelona, I'd like to go there; also South America.

'La Cage' has got a broad appeal. It obviously appeals to the gay community, but it's also a good, fun show that appeals across a broad audience, a great big mixture.

I've been choreographed in various musicals before. So I'm not completely two left feet.

My chin - I've got another one underneath the first one.

I remember as a student going to Covent Garden, where they took out the stall seats and you hunkered down on the floor - I heard Pavarotti in Tosca there, and the experience of being in that same room with that astonishing voice has never left me.

When I watch my sons play, I think, God, acting's the most natural thing in the world. They take the 'Star Wars' characters and say, 'Let's pretend that I'm Hans and you're Luke and that we're on this planet,' etc.

You are in a strange world in pantomime, where you are allowed to step out and talk to the audience and do silly gags. Sometimes I feel like a cartoon character.

Writing opera off as intrinsically elitist is absurd.

It must be every critic's dream when you're at something utterly intolerable to actually get up and intervene and make it stop.

For clothes I go to John Simons on Chiltern Street.