Adrian Lester

If you're in front of an audience and your voice, your mannerism, your pattern of speech, your intellectual approach to the performance tells the audience that you're acting, they will switch off.

Producers are too ready to second-guess an audience, and they always play it very safe.

I had a taste of the Hollywood experience doing 'Primary Colors.' Constant sunshine, your own chauffeur, drop-top BMW, the life of a 'major motion-picture star.' Then I came home and did no paid work for a year.

I'm not a good cook.

Never mind that British history is liberally dotted with ethnic minorities; to most scriptwriters they simply don't exist.

With a theatre audience, the suspension of disbelief is much, much greater than on television. With television, people feel much more like they're a fly on the wall.

I'm not the kind of actor who's going to fit well with a long-running series unless that series offers me the chance to be in new and different situations every week.

I want to play different people all the time.

At heart, I'm analogue. I'm one of those people who has to buy something if they walk past a stationery shop.

In our multicultural society, it is inevitable that there will be a prime minister of colour at some point.

Every time I've played a role - every time - I've been hit by the same response of 'Oh goodness, that's interesting.'

You have to promote yourself. And the only way you do that is by saying no to the things you would have said yes to beforehand, and wait for the next thing to come. The only power you have as an actor is to say no.

When I was in rehearsal in drama school, I would speak things in meter and then never do it again.

There is always more work to do.

I find it quite hard to sum up a show that's been as much fun as 'Hustle.' The upsetting thing is the thought that I may not have this kind of experience again; working with that group of people and doing something where your energies and efforts result in a show that's truly popular.

Ultimately, I prefer being in front of the camera. I didn't train to be a director and my eye on it is purely a narrative exercise. I deal with the emotions of the characters involved because I'm an actor.

Normally on stage you don't get a second take, the song is the song and you can't go, 'Oh you know what, that was a bit rough, I'll go back to the beginning and do it again' - if only we could!

If talent exists, and it's very young, it needs to be nurtured and given a pathway to walk along before you ask it to support itself. That's how any great society should work.

We need to continue to make sure that we are completely inclusive when looking for our audiences.

By the time I was 14, I started getting paid for my work as an actor. For walk on work as well, because I had an equity card. By then, my family accepted what I was going to do as a really sensible and viable option.

I've been in shows that have had bad reviews and they've gone on and sold out and own awards.

There's always a subtle shift that happens in any play I've done that's come to New York, or that's toured, even. The audiences pick up on very much the same things as the London audiences, but there are subtle differences and shifts.

For me, learning stuff has always been a voyage of discovery and if it isn't, then I didn't see the point of it.

I wasn't very good at school.

I loved 'Doomsday' because I got a chance to do a bit of action, a bit of running and jumping, kicking the bad guys around.

I was in a show called 'Undercover,' which did one season for the BBC. It was really well written and it was brilliant to be on screen with Sophie Okonedo - I've always wanted a second season of that.

Sometimes what you turn out may be just a performance, but sometimes what you create will change the way people think about a play, character or situation for the rest of their lives. We don't have to be happy about it - we just have to do it well. That's why acting is not a trade; it's a vocation.

As an actor playing a role, you are asked to visit certain sides of yourself day after day, night after night. If the portrayal requires you to feel some powerful, negative emotions, then once the curtain comes down or the director shouts cut, elements of these feelings will be left with you.

Everything I love about television is encapsulated in how I used to feel watching 'The Sweeney,' 'Starsky & Hutch' and 'Doctor Who' when I was 10.

When cosmetic surgery is used to hold back the passage of time I think it's a bit dodgy. I've been at the odd party where I've looked around the room and people are identikit with the hair, the lips, the eyebrows. The face takes on a certain 'look.'

Our daughters keep my feet on the ground - you learn this complete, unconditional love and it brings everything together.

I've never worried about what my body looked like, I've been more concerned about what it can do, but since I've turned 40 that's changed a bit. I don't play Mr Rippled Muscly Guy anyway, so I'm off the hook in that sense.

I try to be as healthy as I can, but I fail in so many ways. Haagen-Dazs strawberry cheesecake ice cream is one downfall; tarte au citron is another.

As an actor, having to portray a real-life person of extreme talent is fine as long as you're not playing the part on stage and forced to demonstrate that talent to a live audience. If you're in a play portraying an incredible dancer? All well and good, just... don't dance.

If your endgame as an actor is that you want as many people as possible to look at you then that's fine, go do your thing. But we have a greater role - every musician, dancer, singer and actor - and that is to hold a mirror up to society.

An audience can feel when a comedian is confident - and then they will laugh. But if they feel at any point that the comedian is worried or not really on form, then they won't laugh. It's a sixth sense.

Some directors will tell you what to do: stand here, walk over there, sit down. That is the most basic kind of approach, like directing traffic.

I am brilliant at not doing paperwork. I could teach a degree in procrastination.

I'm great at children's parties! Card tricks, cons, the lingo, the whole misdirection thing.

I was a fan of sci-fi shows, such as 'Space: 1999,' 'Blake's 7' and 'UFO.'

I think the best characters are people you're not sure of, that you keep on going: 'God, I hate that person,' but you can see why they do what they do. Overall, it's much more interesting to play someone who's not nice.

In the Heat of the Night' is an excellent piece of work.

We had one TV in the house which sometimes people fought for control over. In those days, you watched one channel at a time and if you missed your programme, well, you missed it.

Never lie to yourself.

Being a dad made me really see what love was.

I'm just very aware of the differences between the way society treats the sexes. I'm aware of how those things can negatively influence a young mind. I think every parent is aware of that.

I think in any long relationship, you may have had four different relationships in that time but they all happen to be with the same person, and you've just changed.

I was never very cool at school. To be cool, you had to listen to the music everyone else listened to, dress and wear your hair the same. The acceptance of difference was very narrow.

I've always admired people who can shift and change, and pop up in areas you didn't think they could, and that's what I wanted to do.

When someone of colour does something out of the ordinary in this business, we hear everyone trumpeting: 'Isn't it wonderful?' but it happens so often now that it's just not newsworthy.