My parents were fantastic. I was an only child, so I had a lot of love and too much attention. I don't think I was spoilt. My mother was quite a disciplinarian, but I did have a lot of attention and quite a lot of pressure to do well at whatever I was doing.

More Quotes by Tim Pigott-Smith

Drama at Bristol was an academic course: you were judged on your A-levels, and there were no auditions. I did a BA General degree.

I would say that the money that was invested in me by Warwickshire Education Authority, which they did for five years, has been repaid a hundred times over. I have paid a lot more back to them in tax than they paid in support to me, but they helped me on my way - they launched me; they got me going.

My wife is a fantastic traveller. She's good fun and very optimistic. Even if things get bad, she's good at seeing the light side.

I didn't like my first primary school in Leicester very much. As I was going home on my tricycle one day, I said, 'There's no reading, no writing and no arithmetic - it's really boring!' So I was sent to St John the Baptist Church of England Primary.

You can't keep a hero down, can you?

Your response to literature is to do with maturity; if you don't respond to a book or a poem when you are 12, you might when you are 13.