Rufus Sewell

I don't think the roles that I'm necessarily known for in this country are my best work, or even anywhere near it. I didn't think I was great in 'Arcadia.' I think it's a great part and a great play and had a lot of attention.

I don't know if the money I've earned is going to need to last me for the next few weeks or the rest of my life.

If my British film career was a girl, then I'd been hanging around outside her apartment a little bit too long.

I don't know why the universe is so determined to keep my feet on the ground.

I'm very, very happy with my recognition/lack of recognition in England in terms of my life. In terms of household name-age. The public's memory is very short, luckily.

I don't have any shame about the way I conducted my professional life.

I've always believed very, very strongly that the way you treat people is more important than anything, professionally or otherwise.

I've discovered that I've never had much respect for money, and that has meant that money has ended up ruling me a little bit more than it should have. So I'm trying to learn - at this late stage in life! - to actually control that.

Hollywood is my domestic idyll.

I'm hoping that a lifetime of compromise and disappointment will read as extra depth and layers in my work.

As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity.

It's important to me to be in a relationship when I'm in one, but I'm not someone who needs to be in a relationship.

I think I was a bit frightened of having to be a grownup and tried to put that off for as long as I could.

I've always liked the idea of regularly doing a play but I was offered things which I felt were too 'celebie' and West Endy.

People talk about me in 'Arcadia' and I think I was okay in it but I've given better performances in other productions that didn't have the same impact. But I knew 'Arcadia' was going to be an event and I wanted to be part of it.

At times, I think of my career as a map. The closer you get to the map, the more you know where you are, but the closer I get to my career, the less happy I feel. At the same time, I have carved out the career for myself which I wanted.

I no longer have a style to maintain. I rent a little flat in Los Angeles, I don't take holidays, I don't dine out and I take cheap flights.

Well, thing is, after they cancelled 'Zen', I didn't work for eight months. And in that case, it was not my choice. After I've done something that I'm really proud of and I think changes the way I'm perceived, the immediate reaction is: nothing.

I was a very undisciplined person but acting was something that actually motivated me to get up in the morning. I hadn't experienced that before, but it was something that really excited me. I think I could be quite self-conscious and it gave me a release.

I wasn't a model schoolboy. Of course, I was forced to sit through Shakespeare and I really got into some of it, though it depended on who was reading it out.

'The Taming Of The Shrew' is probably the first time I've worked in this country for about ten years, apart from theatre, and it's not for want of trying. It was so fantastic to work in London - it felt really glamorous.

My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death; now I see it from my son's perspective.