Quotes from Peter Capaldi

I'm not an extravagant man. The fact that I can have a coffee out whenever I want still makes me feel grateful.

Generally I draw every day just to keep my hand in. I draw while I'm sitting on the Tube or in restaurants. Just doodling things and people I see.

I turn down invitations to events where I know there will be politicians.

I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people.

I don't like parties. There was never a party I was at where I didn't wish I was somewhere else.

The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity!

My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.

Everybody loves monsters.

I destroyed all my geek stuff because I didn't want to be a geek, and I regret it to this day. Consumed in the geek bonfire of the vanities was a collection of autographs and letters from Peter Cushing, Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, the first Doctor Whos, actual astronauts, and many more.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

I was always admiring people who seemed to conduct themselves with ease in the world. Maybe that's a great gift to give your kids if you can do that. Because they can move through the world without neurosis, this anxiety about everything, which our own parents gave us.

I think the nice thing about 'Doctor Who' is whether people like it or don't like it, somewhere, someone loves you and will always love you - and the more everyone hates you, the more they'll love you.

Even though I am a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan, I've not played him since I was nine. I downloaded old scripts and practised those in front of the mirror.

I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.

Scottish men of a certain age have a black response to almost everything as a measure of how sophisticated they are. I have a very long fuse that eventually explodes after building up a nice head of steam, although it's only happened three times - usually at work when someone takes me for granted.

I'm creative. I can't relax unless I've got some project on the go. I'm somebody from art school, and art school during the punk era, when you just had a go at whatever came along.

Before 'Local Hero,' I'd been knocking about Glasgow in rock bands, drinking too much and generally being 21. My opinion of actors was that they were straight and boring, so you see, I was completely unprepared for being one.

I think the periods of being unsuccessful have made me a better actor.

The thing that runs through the British film industry even today is a lot of unsung movies are financially the bigger ones. Even though they weren't always the greatest of movies, something in them was very potent which people loved.

I think all actors experience ups and downs.

What you're doing is acting with yourself. Well, I'm my favourite actor, so in a way it's quite straightforward for me.

I love Hugh Laurie, but I don't want to be a guy who goes to work every day for nine months of the year in a corner of Burbank. I really don't. I like doing a bit here and a bit there and strange things, and I think that's held me back.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week.

A girl once came to my beery flat in Kensal Green, opened the blinds and cooked me breakfast. I married her.