Paris 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 AtkinsonThe job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.
Rowan AtkinsonThe Maigret stories are all very different in terms of the content and the way that the stories are told. They're not what I would call formulaic.
Rowan AtkinsonThe Scarlet Pimpernel is the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot won the A.D.31 'Best Disciple' competition.
Rowan AtkinsonI suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It's not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.
Rowan Atkinson