Quotes from Tim Pigott-Smith

Sometimes I Rollerblade to work, but it's most lovely in the park, and it's really quite safe there. I do it quite carefully, and I wear all the gear.

I like songs to mean something as well as sound good, and Paul Simon is a maestro. While Art Garfunkel was a voice and moved on to other things Simon remained the genius lyricist and composer.

I'm quite sharp but not particularly academic.

America is very generous, but it's also a bit wacky, you know.

As a child, we lived in flats, and I was never allowed pets.

There is something about the way I photograph. People often say, 'Are you cross with me?' My eyes can look sort of... like a wall.

The Almeida's artistic director, Rupert Goold, brought me Mike Bartlett's 'King Charles III' with the slightly apologetic warning that it was in blank verse, but, of course, that appealed to me.

When I get thinking, I get very knotted up. I chew things over a lot and take things quite seriously.

After 'Jewel In the Crown,' I hardly worked at all for about six months - which came as a bit of a surprise, I have to admit.

Your response to literature is to do with maturity; if you don't respond to a book or a poem when you are 12, you might when you are 13.

Performing King Charles in Mike Bartlett's astonishing play in London and New York has been one of the high points of my career.

What makes Biarritz special, as far as I'm concerned, are the fantastic coastline, the beaches - such as the Cotes des Basques - and the sea.

For sheer excitement, a weekend in New York is unbeatable. Arrive on Friday morning, leave on Monday night, and don't worry about jet lag - just buzz for four days.

I didn't like my first primary school in Leicester very much. As I was going home on my tricycle one day, I said, 'There's no reading, no writing and no arithmetic - it's really boring!' So I was sent to St John the Baptist Church of England Primary.

Hollywood's best producers and directors are in film, not TV.

When you've won the war, you're faced with the problem of winning the peace.

By early 1971, I had been acting professionally for 18 months - theatre work and my first telly, an episode of 'Dr. Who.'

Occasionally, there are programmes - like 'The Office' or 'Gavin and Stacey,' perhaps - where you get the feeling everybody's seen it.

After a West End run, in which I was promoted to Laertes, I joined the RSC in 1972. I had fulfilled my dream.

When I was 16, we moved to live in Stratford-Upon-Avon. That was the year of Paul Scofield's 'Lear.' I think he is still widely perceived as the only actor who has got his flag at the top of the mountain.

You had to be there at the time to understand the wild creative energy of the Fab Four, and this contains forays into Indian music as well as classics such as 'When I'm Sixty-Four.'

In England, anybody who was alive remembers an interview between the press and Charles and Diana, right after they became engaged. One of the press asked Charles if he loved her. And he said, 'Oh, well, whatever love means.' Boy, it was a terrible answer.

People are fed up with broadcasters pushing the boundaries too far.

I've played quite a lot of real people, and it carries a special responsibility.