Drawing is the only thing I've found in which I can lose myself completely. I love it. It started as something that relaxed me, but now it's a struggle because I'm pushing myself. The day-to-day sketching is fraught.

A girl once came to my beery flat in Kensal Green, opened the blinds and cooked me breakfast. I married her.

Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.

My family know not to get me any tech for Christmas. I can never get it to work, and it all becomes very tearful and pressurised.

I could never plan to have a career that went this well... you know, there were times when it didn't: when it went into the toilet, or ducked, or was difficult to get moving.

I've been really terrible in a lot of things because I learned by making mistakes. That makes you a different kind of actor, because you have to figure out for yourself what you do.

I don't like parties. There was never a party I was at where I didn't wish I was somewhere else.

The biggest thing I have realized was that you have to choose your collaborators very carefully, and that not everybody can like you. The process of filmmaking is so difficult, there's no point in doing it unless you can do it the way you want.

If I had gone to drama school, I wouldn't be sitting here now because it would have blanded me out; it would have just turned me into another actor.

Being asked to play 'The Doctor' is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can't wait to get started.

A little showbiz never hurt anyone.

When I was acting, I was always asking abut the mechanics of filmmaking. I decided I would learn what everyone on set was doing, so I would feel less threatened.

What you're doing is acting with yourself. Well, I'm my favourite actor, so in a way it's quite straightforward for me.

Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh.

I think the periods of being unsuccessful have made me a better actor.

The Americans just have a great sort of wit about them.

One of the very, very exciting things I have found here in L.A. is that no one talks to you about being Scottish. Whereas, if you are in London and you are trying to put films together and be a film-maker, there is a kind of unspoken sense that, if you are Scottish, you have something to overcome or else you cannot really do that project.

There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.

I failed the audition to get into drama school.

I destroyed all my geek stuff because I didn't want to be a geek, and I regret it to this day. Consumed in the geek bonfire of the vanities was a collection of autographs and letters from Peter Cushing, Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, the first Doctor Whos, actual astronauts, and many more.

We don't consider the Wizard of Oz or Father Christmas to be too old. They're still magical characters, and the fact they've been around the block only adds to their magic.

A year after winning the Oscar, almost to the day, I was directing a dog food commercial.

I was always admiring people who seemed to conduct themselves with ease in the world. Maybe that's a great gift to give your kids if you can do that. Because they can move through the world without neurosis, this anxiety about everything, which our own parents gave us.

What's now shocking is I can't say anything publicly without it having a life. Not because I have extraordinary views but because people are keen on conflict, so they'll make that the story.

I don't remember 'Doctor Who' not being part of my life, and it became a part of growing up, along with The Beatles, National Health spectacles, and fog. And it runs deep. It's in my DNA.

It seems to me that most things that are being made are designed for young people. There aren't that many depictions of melancholic older people, even though they form a growing proportion of the population.

I always thought it was funny that my grandparents had bought a ticket to New York and ended up in Glasgow.

At 17 years old, STG took me under its wing and shared its resources and wisdom with me, even allowing me to take part in a show at the Edinburgh Festival. Without STG and the Ramshorn Theatre, I would not have found access to the world of drama that I later made my profession.

Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.

'Doctor Who' belongs to all of us. Everybody makes 'Doctor Who.'

My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.

In Peter Ackroyd's book 'London: The Biography,' he describes the route of the medieval wall that enclosed the original city. Take the book and follow it from the Tower of London via the Barbican to Ludgate Hill. You experience the real history of London.

When I was a kid, I wrote to the BBC, and the producers sent me a huge package through the post with 'Doctor Who' scripts. I'd never even seen a script and couldn't believe that they actually wrote this stuff down. It sort of opened a door.

I'm fascinated by fire. When I was four, I wore an American fireman's hat all the time, and I still have one in my office today. Glasgow used to be called 'Tinderbox City;' there were always fires, people getting killed.

I haven't played Doctor Who since I was 9 on the playground.

The only time I've tried to make plans, the cosmic sledgehammer has intervened and something else has happened. You just have to wait and see what comes your way, so that's what I do.

Every viewer who ever turned on 'Doctor Who' has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.

I like the constant rise and fall of the British film industry. But above all, I like the workhorses who kept going no matter what.

I've lost count of the times I've been asked to 'be' Malcolm Tucker: to go on a political program on television, presumably in order to be the character and give opinions as him.

I'm not an extravagant man. The fact that I can have a coffee out whenever I want still makes me feel grateful.

I didn't want to be Doctor Who in a 'Doctor Who' that I didn't like.

The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity!

The best advice is to get on with it. I'm very prone to falling into depressions - not clinical, just 'can't be bothered.' It's such a waste of time.

I hate the Internet. It's full of rubbish. I'm on it all the time, watching terrible, useless things and ossifying my brain.

I love people where, at the end of the day, they'll pick up a paintbrush and paint clouds. They can physically make things.

I never really think of acting and directing as being separate; they are just different expressions of the same thing.

Believe it or not, one teacher used to call me a giant spastic for not being able to play football.

'Atlantic City' is very good.

If people enjoy my profile from the privacy of their own home, that's entirely up to you.

I hated improvisation because in my early days as an actor, improvisation meant somebody had just come down from Oxford and they were doing a play above a pub in Kentish Town, and the biggest ego would win.