Mark Gatiss

At school I briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I was no good at chemistry and physics.

I'm terribly nostalgic, but I'm with the Elizabethans who thought nostalgia was a disease. It's a dangerous place to be because you can get caught up in it.

Even though it's meant to be the season of jollity and goodwill, there's something delicious about the anticipation of a Christmassy ghost thrill.

Fear is an underrated emotion. And that's why I think it's very dangerous to try and cosset children from it. A healthy scare is as good as as a healthy laugh. In fact, they're two sides of the same coin. There is a desire to shield from the knocks and bumps of reality.

One of the pleasures of the original 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' is how incredibly ghastly they are. The ugly sisters have their eyes pecked out by crows.

Slightly forgettable movies can sometimes make great musicals.

I love going to galleries, particularly the National Portrait Gallery.

Grooming-wise, it is now a constant battle as I progressively turn into my father. I have to keep on top of ear and nose hair - things you never believe will happen to you. Suddenly I have a shaving brush in my ear and I don't know where it's come from, and the more hair I take the out, the more it surges back.

I used to go to the gym regularly and swim an awful lot, but that was when I was unemployed and knew leisure intimately.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks - who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.

The first film I can remember seeing on TV was 'The Brides of Dracula.' I was instantly hooked.

When I was seven or eight, I was bought a fantastic book called 'The Movie Treasury of Horror Movies' by Alan G. Frank; it became my bible. It's packed full of the most amazing photos and is still fantastic to look at.

'Misfits' is one of my favorite shows; I think it's a fantastic show.

I'm a great believer in the beauty and the power of surprise.

My dad was quite a forbidding figure. I realise now that that was mainly because he worked so hard. He wasn't unkind, but he was a presence.

I think a lot of people who say they are bisexual aren't.

I grew up with low self-esteem. I didn't think I was very pretty. I had glasses, red hair and was generally quite a spod.

They are called 'Emos' now, and before that they were 'Goths.' They didn't have a name for it when I was one, but I was that black-wearing teenager and yes, I wore a little eyeliner.

For some reason, I always get offered plays when I'm doing plays and then, if I stop doing them, people stop asking me.

I love the Shakespeare history plays; I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.

I always wanted to do Restoration comedy. It seems like so much fun.

It's a cliche, but it's true that all the fun lies in baddies, grotesques and comic roles.

Sci-fi and fantasy used to be a TV staple throughout my childhood. Then it just stopped dead. It was seen as culty, a minority interest.

Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.