I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's….

It's a bit disconcerting being treated like Madonna..

Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther..

It's the demand in many ways of modern television drama - it's very low key and naturalistic, and, generally speaking, the characters that I've playe….

The Maigret stories are all very different in terms of the content and the way that the stories are told. They're not what I would call formulaic..

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arroga….

The good thing about those original credit card commercials was that they were very "filmic", they were like little movies, so it wasn't a big step t….

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important….

Marketing is what gets you noticed, and that side of it something - this side of it, if you like, doing interviews - is the side of it that I least e….

This is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded….

Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed t….

The arts community still has a long lasting cynicism of the importance, or the artistic value, of comedy. Comedy is just farting about for money..

I don't really have plans like that [move towards more dramatic acting]..

Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That's a platform we use, or a priest. You know, any….

[Maigret Sets a Trap] was always going to be the first film, and it seemed to be quite a nice story. But of course it meant that here I was playing t….

I can be reasonably funny and light-hearted when I'm in the company of good friends, but I'm not a jokesmith. I tend to be quite serious..

I think in many ways Johnny English is a more believable character..

It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear….

Johnny English is someone who really means well it's just that he's not as good as he thinks he is, and I think that maybe that's the British male in….