Quotes from Dan Stevens

Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.

The Broadway audiences are very vocal and seem very engaged. For certain shows, especially with a show like 'The Heiress,' the audience's reactions sound like 'The Jerry Springer Show' sometimes. That seems to be a very New York thing. Oh, there's also the entrance round of applause here, which we don't get too much in London.

As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form, I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.

I don't know much about my biological background.

I'm amazed by just constantly - there's not a week that goes past where there's not someone in Ulan Bator or Rio De Janeiro suddenly says, 'Ooh, 'Downton' started this week.' You completely forget it's staggered across the world.

I'm sure I wouldn't have been asked to judge the Man Booker if it weren't for 'Downton.'

I do listen to a lot of music. Actually, I very often ask directors if they can offer up a play list. They very often have one anyway that they're listening to.

There is great worth in holding universal truths and timelessly beautiful words in your heart, which will stay there forever, infusing your thoughts and speech…

I haven't done as many films as I would have liked. A lot of my contemporaries have done more. I don't have 'I will be a movie star' emblazoned on anything, but I'd like do a bit more screen stuff and then when the time is right come back to theatre. When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.

I saw Mercury Prize-winners Alt-J for the first time recently, touring their debut album 'An Awesome Wave,' and I'm still riding the high: they're the most musically dynamic and exciting band to have poured tune into my lug holes live since Bellowhead.

'Planet Earth' was such an extraordinary series and the 'Making Of'... is fascinating: the creatures and stories behind the camera are just as fascinating as those in front. It's a bit of a dream come true to be a part of the team in some small way.

Not a lot of people would think that I spent most of my early years totally rebelling against anything I could, getting suspended from school, going on demonstrations.

I'm lucky to be married to someone who entirely gets what I do. She is totally sympathetic to the actor's life. Her own mother was an actress, so she sort of grew up with it.

Books are my weakness.

I would like to do something modern and possibly funny.

A British porch is a musty, forbidding non-room in which to fling a sodden umbrella or a muddy pair of boots; a guard against the elements and strangers. By contrast the good ol' American front porch seems to stand for positivity and openness; a platform from which to welcome or wave farewell; a place where things of significance could happen.

I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

I'm shocked at being recognized. You go to places you don't think you would be and still, you are. Taxi drivers often recognise me... but I haven't got a free ride yet.

I was a pretty difficult teenager.

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

You can be romantically interested in someone and love them and still, I think, be really interested in things and a certain lifestyle that person might provide.

It's head and heart. I like to feed both. I always wanted to be an actor. But the cultural-intellectual side of things has always excited me. I wouldn't want to let it go.

When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.

It's the challenge of trying to evoke any kind of sympathy for a role that ordinarily we would say, "Oh, this is a bad guy" and dismiss him.