Matthew Macfadyen Thinking Quotations

The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'

I try to be fussy about the parts I play. I think that's quite prudent, it means you're stretching different muscles, and you're scaring yourself by doing something which is out of your comfort zone.

I think it sits quite happily with me, the condition of being an actor. I see some people getting quite eaten up with it, with the insecurities. There are times when I long for continuity and stability, but I also love the idea of not knowing what I'll be doing next - or even if I'm going to work.

People like to think that actors are terribly worried about ghosts of other actors in the parts they play. But you just have to get on with it.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

I think people ought to do what they feel useful at the time. If I do things because I ought to do them, I switch off.

You never know how films are going to do and it is daunting if I think about it.

I would hate not to do a play every couple of years. I think it's not me.