What directors of television drama constantly tell you is 'Don't act it. Don't try. Don't emphasise that word'. Whereas with someone like Blackadder, even though he's a relatively low key character in a way, he did relish the lines that he had and the words that he was given, with a lot of inflection.
Rowan Atkinson[Maigret] is more internal. I think if we made more of these I might let him out a bit.
Rowan AtkinsonI have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people-and I wish them no ill-are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one.
Rowan AtkinsonFunny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.
Rowan AtkinsonParis in the mid-'50s was a very interesting place. It was only ten years after the Third Reich had left, and the city was awash with guns, and crime, and racketeering, and all sorts of hangovers from a very difficult time in French history. So it's an interesting time to be a policeman.
Rowan Atkinson