One longs to be funny, to make people laugh. Laughter is such a sign of approval, isn't it?

I'm really not an actor of any kind. I've always seen myself as an entertainer, someone who makes people laugh. That's all I've ever wanted to do. 'Doctor Who' has always just been me, really.

We are pre-disposed for fantasy, there is a natural impulse for human beings to want to get off their heads or out of their heads in something in a substance or a drink or an idea or a religion which will comfort them and make life exciting.

It never occurred to me that I’d be typecast, although I was. And I never thought of the role as a commercial product, because I was… well, I was playing this slightly messianic alien. He isn’t violent, he doesn’t get his leg over the girl, he doesn’t steal, and he’s rather wry, and adorable, and mysterious. He’s lived for 900 years or something. He lives the life of the old patriarchs of the Old Testament. That’s not commercial. He’s special.

I'm the only man in London that 'Don't talk to strange men' doesn't apply to.

I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success, but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who, it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring.

I think quite often a fate worse than death is life, for lots of people.