Elliot Cowan quotes:

Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I've some other reference for extreme experience that isn't me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It's a way of controlling the uncontrollable.

I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp.

As I get older, the more I don't want my life to be emotionally out of balance in the way it was in my twenties.

Even though momentarily I thought about being a doctor, I was always involved in theatre and did a drama degree. I just didn't have the guts to go, 'Yes, I'm going to be an actor,' until I was probably 21.

What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - it's relevant to my life as an actor and as a man.

At a party in L.A., I met this middle-aged gentleman who I was talking to for ages when I asked, 'So, what do you do?' Turns out I was speaking to legendary music producer Quincy Jones, who worked on Michael Jackson's hits. And there was little old me rattling on - I was so embarrassed.

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world.

I've not been distracted by a long-running TV show or visits to America for pilot season.

Plant spirit medicine is the shaman's way with plants. It recognizes that plants have spirit and that spirit is the strongest medicine. Spirit can heal the deepest reaches of the heart and soul.

What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - its relevant to my life as an actor and as a man.