Quotes from David Suchet

A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.

I'm really into my photography and am trying to catch up with digital generation - I was used to the old 35mm cameras.

I suppose I could be accused of taking acting too seriously and losing the fun of it. I do take my work very seriously; I take on the responsibility of it.

Although I'm a very emotional man, I just can't have blind faith, I have to find out for myself.

I'm never bored, never ever bored. If I've got a day off I'll sit in a cafe and watch and observe. I'm a great observer.

I became fascinated by the fact that people write to give away rather than write to be read. It's the difference between playwrights and novelists.

This is one of the great charms of Poirot's investigations, for they reveal a world where manners and morals are quite different from today. There are no overt and unnecessary sex scenes, no alcoholic, haunted detectives in Poirot's world. He lives in a simpler, some would say more human, era: a lost England, seen through the admiring eyes of this foreigner, this little Belgian detective.

As I look across at the camera for the final time, I think back to Poirot's last words to Hastings on Friday. 'Cher ami,' I said softly, as he was leaving Poirot to rest. That phrase meant an enormous amount to me, which is why I repeated it after he had shut the door behind him. But my second 'cher ami' in that scene was for someone other than Hastings. It was for my dear, dear friend Poirot. I was saying goodbye to him as well, and I felt it with all my heart.

When Hercule Poirot died on that late November afternoon in 2012, a part of me died with him.

Then, towards the end of the meal, Anthony Hicks leant across the table towards me and looked me straight in the eye. 'I want you to remember', he said, a touch fiercely, 'that we, the audience, can and will smile with Poirot.' Then he paused. 'But we must never, ever, laugh at him.' There was another pause. 'And I am most certainly not joking.' I gulped, before Rosalind said, equally forcefully, 'And that is why we want you to play him.

Then, as the warm winds of May turned into an even warmer June, I started to write my private list of Poirot's habits and character. I called it my 'dossier of characteristics'. It ended up five pages long and detailed ninety-three different aspects of his life. I have the list to this day – in fact, I carried it around on the set with me throughout all my years as Poirot, just as I gave a copy to every director I worked with on a Poirot film.

It was for my dear, dear friend Poirot. I was saying goodbye to him as well, and I felt it with all my heart.

Zis David Suchet, he zinks he knows me, but, of course, he does not. He is clever, but I am brilliant.

That's the thing about film acting and television acting. You just release yourself and do what is true for the moment, and ignore everybody and everything and all the technical razzmatazz that goes on.

The joy of my career is I've been very blessed to be able to be an actor in major films, television, theater, and also British radio. In fact, my dream as an actor when I started out was to be able to work in all the media. Thankfully, that's what I'm being given to do.

I've always been short and stocky. So when I got into repertory theatre after graduation, I found myself doing character roles: because of my deep voice, shape and height, I was playing 40-year-old, 50-year-old roles at the age of 23.

I'm 64 years old, and I've been acting now for 42 years. Only recently have I thought to myself, 'Hmmm, it may be interesting to start directing.'

I would have liked to do more big movies. And the reason I say that is not because I want to be a star, but what I would have liked to have done is reached a different audience with my work.

When I was 18 and not sure whether I wanted to be an actor, I realised that a playwright has no voice without an actor. That's my reason for acting: to get that character as right as possible for my writer. And I have never changed my philosophy.

When you're doing characters from famous novels, you have a responsibility as an actor to make it what the writer intended. And then you add and expand from there to create a three-dimensional performance.

I'm three-quarters Russian, so I've always felt an outsider. But I don't think you can be in a play with John Of Gaunt's 'This sceptred isle' speech and not feel proud to be British.

I am very traditional as a man. I am not modern and never have been. I think I was born 50 years of age and out of my time.

I'm not an evangelist Christian at all. I can't try to convert anybody. It's not in me to do that. But my faith has given me such an appreciation of people and meaningful relationships, and a world view which I didn't have before. And although I will fail every day, it gives me something to aspire to.

I'd love to be remembered as a character actor who brought illumination to roles in wonderful plays and who delivered performances that made people think and rethink those roles.