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.

I was initially rather charmed by David Cameron, but I think he's revealing himself to be a slightly darker and less charismatic figure than he first appeared. There's a brutality about him.

Personally, I have as little to do with politicians as possible. The ones that I've met I've found very boring. They're extremely egotistical, incredibly self-important. If I can help it, I try to stay as far away from them as possible.

I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.

If I was to meet my eight-year-old self, I would say, 'Don't listen to what they say about you. Wear your anorak with pride!'

I could make the title of my memoirs: 'It's got cinematic disaster written all over it.'

When I was at school, you couldn't draw and be into football, too. If you were into art, then you were seen as an absolute pansy, and there was no way you'd be admitted to the guys' world of football.

I love Hugh Laurie, but I don't want to be a guy who goes to work every day for nine months of the year in a corner of Burbank. I really don't. I like doing a bit here and a bit there and strange things, and I think that's held me back.

The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned.

Maybe it's because I've been an actor for such a long time, but I think, unless you're a big star, you don't really have much control over anything. I've never been able to make any plans.

I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube.

Even though I am a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan, I've not played him since I was nine. I downloaded old scripts and practised those in front of the mirror.

What I've learnt being an actor is that you've got to be lucky. I got less lucky, and nobody was interested. If a part came up, it would be for the main corpse's friend's brother who was having problems with his marriage.

My childhood growing up in that part of Glasgow always sounds like some kind of sub-Catherine Cookson novel of earthy working-class immigrant life, which to some extent it was, but it wasn't really as colourful that.

I can't imagine I'll be the new George Clooney. That's not really in the cards.

Hollywood producers aren't going to say, 'Get me that swearing, grey-haired, headless chicken. We need him for our new 'High School Musical' movie!'

Scottish men of a certain age have a black response to almost everything as a measure of how sophisticated they are. I have a very long fuse that eventually explodes after building up a nice head of steam, although it's only happened three times - usually at work when someone takes me for granted.

STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow's rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.

It's weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat.

I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty.

What annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands. It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow.

I don't want to find myself at the age of 60 waiting by the telephone for someone else to decide if I am capable of being in what might be a crummy TV production.

The difference between movies and TV is that in TV you have to have a trauma every week, but that event may not be the biggest event in the characters' lives.

I'm pretty good for an old geek.

I'm so lucky to have worked with Burt Lancaster, who I remember was one of the first people I'd heard swearing in a really interesting way.