Elliot Cowan

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm still very much about being an actor. That's why I'm not married with kids.

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.

I've done some bits of shockingly bad TV that have never been shown, or at least I hope they've never been shown... Please don't dig them out!

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.

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.

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.