Peter Capaldi quotes:

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.

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

When I first came to London, I loved hanging around in cafes, smoking, scribbling, dreaming. It was life-affirming and fun.

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.

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.

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.

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 went to art school in the days when it was what you did if you didn't want to be like everybody else. You wanted to be strange and different, and art school encouraged that. We hated the drama students - they were guys with pipes and cardigans.

Recently, I dreamed that I returned home to find my wife had married Ray Winstone. They were kind and let me stay, but the whole thing was awkward.

The big reason that 'Doctor Who' is still with us is that every single viewer who ever turned in to watch this show, at any age, at any time in its history, took it into their heart - because 'Doctor Who' belongs to all of us. Everyone made 'Doctor Who.'

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

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 know what 'Doctor Who' fans are like because I am a 'Doctor Who' fan myself. They're good people.

The biggest problem of all is that it's very difficult to tell my daughter, 'Swearing is not clever or funny,' because I earn a living by swearing.

Atlantic City' is very good.

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.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week.

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.

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.

I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and certainly some of the food would have been appealing, but the disease and hygiene would have worried me.

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'm creative. I can't relax unless I've got some project on the go. I'm somebody from art school, and art school during the punk era, when you just had a go at whatever came along.

The thing that runs through the British film industry even today is a lot of unsung movies are financially the bigger ones. Even though they weren't always the greatest of movies, something in them was very potent which people loved.

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!

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

I've had very bleak experiences in hospitals, but they were also sometimes very funny.

The nurses' job is emotional and distressing. Their day-to-day work is dealing with people withering and falling to pieces. So black humour is essential for them cope with that. It's just a consequence of their environment.

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.

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

Once you reach a certain age, you find yourself visiting hospitals a lot.

I don't mind being stereotyped as angry - it's good to have a job.

You can't blame anyone for being cynical about politicians.

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

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.

Everywhere I go, I am The Doctor, and everyone smiles at me - they are pleased to see Doctor Who, who's far more exciting than I am.

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.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

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

Of course I've had my moments of wanting to go back to Scotland, and I almost did a couple of times, but other things just came up.

There are only a handful of really good TV programmes, and I'm blessed to be in one of them.

One year was so bad for me and my wife that we were going to have to sell our house until Elaine decided to change career and earn some money.

It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn't miserable, and it wasn't poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights.

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.

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!'

I've only lost my temper three times in my whole life.

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

I failed the audition to get into drama school.

I think the nice thing about 'Doctor Who' is whether people like it or don't like it, somewhere, someone loves you and will always love you - and the more everyone hates you, the more they'll love you.

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 haven't found anything to complain about. But being Scottish, it won't be long.

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.

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

I was just interested in directing. So I just kept having a go at trying to write little scripts and get things together, and my wife just had a slip of the tongue and said, "Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life" when she meant to say "Frank Capra's." There it is right there. That's a gag that we could make into something.

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.

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.

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.

A little showbiz never hurt anyone.

Before 'Local Hero,' I'd been knocking about Glasgow in rock bands, drinking too much and generally being 21. My opinion of actors was that they were straight and boring, so you see, I was completely unprepared for being one.

For all I know, my grandfather was a bank robber in Kilsyth.

I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos, and suddenly, you find yourself going one-to-one with this guy who you've been watching for years, watching every flicker in his eye and every detail on his face.

I'd say, don't listen to what anyone says: you're good. Go put your anorak on. Get your thick bottle-top specs. Draw your little cartoons and your comics and keep writing to the BBC.

I don't go to pubs.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I hate restaurants that play music. You come out for a quiet meal, and you're supposed to put up with all this booming. Why? It's madness!

My adolescence was a kind of motorway pile-up. I wish I had known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.

I'm not terribly well read. My wife forces books into my hands and insists I read them, which I'm grateful to her for. She made me read 'War and Peace.' The whole thing. It was amazing, but I had to hide it. You can't walk round reading 'War and Peace' - it's like you're in a comedy sketch and you think you're smart.

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.

I turn down invitations to events where I know there will be politicians.

Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.

Comic-Con is so legendary, so a great thrill to be invited along.

I think it's not misplaced in 'Doctor Who' to have someone who is little bit edgy and maybe a little volatile and dangerous.

I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.

I've always been interested in the idea of people who fell through the cracks.

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 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.

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

I have a fairly normal domestic life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people.

It's one thing getting the job of Doctor Who, which is wonderful. And then the next thing they say to you is, 'We're going to announce it live on television!' And you think, 'That's not exactly what I thought I was signing up for!'

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 wouldn't be here if it were not for the grant system that paid for me to go to art school - because my parents couldn't have afforded it.

I just consciously try to enjoy the good things that are happening. And if it ended tomorrow, that would be fine.

Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.

Nothing compares to being in a room full of politicians screaming abuse at each other all night. It's hilarious but also a bit terrifying.

Nowadays, kids... young actors... they go straight to L.A. before they've even done anything.

I don't have any expectations of anything.

Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

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

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

I found American actors quite scary because they're brilliant actors and brilliantly funny, and they never stopped once you wound them up... off they went and they just deliver fantastic stuff.

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

I knew Richard E. Grant, and I went to him and said "Would you like to [play Kafka in the film]?" and he said yeah, and then suddenly I had all these people who were happy to come along. We got a little bit of money from Scottish Screen to pay for it. I got so many favors because I knew people in the business. I was in a remarkably good position. I got so many favors from people. I got the Monty Python technical people.

I think that people like the idea that fans are sort of slightly eccentric and strange, but generally I've just found them very creative and warm and cheerful.

I think the most extraordinary thing about fans is the level of excellence that they show in the work that they do. I mean, if you go onto the internet and see some of the fan videos that have been put together, they're just extraordinary; they could be programmes in their own right.

I was amazed to go Oscar and win it. It was fantastic getting up on the stage there and looking down. I thought, "That guy looks like Steve Martin, and that guy's like Arnold Schwarzenegger." But it was Steve Martin, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they have this terrible kind of conveyor belt backstage - literally - where they take you to this big hangar where the world's press are gathered, and they make you stand on a stage, and they introduce you.

If you actually have to engage with somebody who's superior to you and actually battle with them, struggle with them, I think it's more interesting, and funnier for the audience.

I'm pretty good for an old geek.

Keep going and don't give up. You're doing wonderfully. You'll know how to fly this thing eventually.

My family has to be very patient living with me, if you're playing a part that's not you. You have to get it right.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week. So the events that occur are rarely life-changing. But with film, you can say that this thing only happened once; this is a major thing that happened to these people.

The older I get, the more I think lightness of touch is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

There is no greater symbol of the artistic spirit of Scotland than the Mackintosh building. But more than that it is a symbol of where art belongs, rising as it does out of the heart of a great city. A mighty castle on a hill, it is a part of me, and of all Glaswegians.