Bertie Carvel quotes:

I overthink everything. I'm very keen there should be a positive outcome. I like to control outcomes. But you can't. That's what is nice about being an actor, that you work really hard and it pays off. But at the end of the day, for it to be any good, you have to let go. I'd like to be better at this in life.

It's what all actors try to do, really, to just preserve the child inside them because their imagination is quite available. I think partly it's because they're still making sense of the world. They haven't boxed everything up so neatly as most adults have. And the thing is adults haven't solved the world - they've just found a coping mechanism.

It's an odd experience reading interviews with yourself. Interesting, though. Of course, you know that the journalist will have edited, rephrased or even rewritten what you actually said, but you can't help feeling that there's a special kind of truth in the way someone else paints you, however subjective they might be.

I think. as a child, there's something frightening about certain adults, particularly when you're in their clutches or power. That must be the reason why Roald Dahl creates such brilliant characters: He taps into something in the collective memory of people.

Acting is a mysterious process.

I live close to Hampstead Heath, so when I do have spare time, I like to raise my white blood cell count with a swim in the men's pond. It's an ambition of mine to swim in the ponds on every day of the year.

I get so carried away in interviews and deliver 1,500-word treatises, then find it's been reduced to something pithier but also not quite accurate. Although I imagine there are people I work with who wish they could edit me every day.

People's character is their behaviour - we're all capable of good and evil.

I came to musical theatre from straight acting, and a lot of my friends have a real prejudice about musical theatre - one I probably shared.

Working with the children on 'Matilda' has been a joy. They don't do this professionally - their sense of discovery is instinctive, and the challenge for us adults is to keep that going in ourselves when we're doing it for the fiftieth or the hundredth time. To my delight and amazement, it hasn't gone stale - we discover it freshly every time.

It might sound glib, but in a sense, as an actor I'm a journalist and a psychologist recording life and truth.

Actors tend to be quite good at getting on with people. If youâ??re an arsehole, people donâ??t want to work with you. You wonâ??t get hired Well, there are a few arseholes.

It might sound glib, but in a sense, as an actor Im a journalist and a psychologist recording life and truth.