Quotes from Tim Pigott-Smith

My first arrival in India was memorable - landing at Delhi airport at 2 A.M. to start filming 'The Jewel in the Crown' in the Eighties. The man who was supposed to pick me up wasn't there, so I spent a very uncomfortable three hours phoning around hotels to find out where I was supposed to be. It was a major culture shock, but I adored India.

I was really uncomfortable with fame. I mean, it's lovely and flattering, and you enjoy all the razzmatazz and being flown around, but when people suddenly call you a star, you think, 'I'm not a star, I'm just playing a star role.'

I have only met Prince Charles once, when he was very charming and easy to chat to. I have always had a soft spot for him, and I admire our constitutional monarchy, but Charles often comes across as eccentric, and he has a mixed press.

I especially like the Padstow area and the south coast near Portloe. It's lovely, though I do wish it was a bit closer to London.

I seem to get cast as one of two extremes. Either I play the butch heavy or totally nice guys.

When 'Jewel' was screened, old friends from school and university got back in touch. More than one of them told me that their partners hated Merrick so much they could not think of having me in the house. This kind of audience identification does not happen in any other medium.

You normally either get bitten by a character and decide that is the way to play it, and then that begins to inform everything you do, or you decide, 'I don't need to use much character in this - I have basically got to be me'.

I like jazz, and Martin Taylor and his band have it all, including a wonderful saxophonist and very fine accordionist, so you get a rather unusual range of sound.

Of course there is a danger of typecasting, and since 'Jewel in the Crown' appeared, I have had countless offers to play sadistic policemen and middle-class misfits.

You wouldn't read 'Anna Karenina' and try to work on the computer at the same time, would you?

I earn a lot of money in England doing voice-overs, especially in documentaries. Turn on the Discovery Channel here, and you'll hear my voice a lot. It subsidizes my vice of acting in the theater.

Villains are always the best roles, but that meant that for months afterwards, all I got offered were absolute cads and bounders and really nasty pieces of work, as well as a lot of people who only had one arm. Such is the limited imaginative power, you see, of a great many casting directors.