Top 100 Peter Capaldi Quotes
#1. Nowadays, kids ... young actors ... they go straight to L.A. before they've even done anything.
Peter Capaldi
#2. There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.
Peter Capaldi
#3. I love Hugh Laurie, but I don't want to be a guy who goes to work every day for nine months of the year in a corner of Burbank. I really don't. I like doing a bit here and a bit there and strange things, and I think that's held me back.
Peter Capaldi
#5. Scottish men of a certain age have a black response to almost everything as a measure of how sophisticated they are. I have a very long fuse that eventually explodes after building up a nice head of steam, although it's only happened three times - usually at work when someone takes me for granted.
Peter Capaldi
#6. When I was acting, I was always asking abut the mechanics of filmmaking. I decided I would learn what everyone on set was doing, so I would feel less threatened.
Peter Capaldi
#7. You can't, as an actor, conduct yourself by making constant references to other people.
Peter Capaldi
#8. Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.
Peter Capaldi
#9. I've had very bleak experiences in hospitals, but they were also sometimes very funny.
Peter Capaldi
#10. I think the periods of being unsuccessful have made me a better actor.
Peter Capaldi
#11. Every viewer who ever turned on 'Doctor Who' has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.
Peter Capaldi
#12. Of course I've had my moments of wanting to go back to Scotland, and I almost did a couple of times, but other things just came up.
Peter Capaldi
#13. If you travel in time and space, most of the people you know and love will eventually be gone. But you'll also be able to go and find them again.
Peter Capaldi
#14. For all I know, my grandfather was a bank robber in Kilsyth.
Peter Capaldi
#15. I could make the title of my memoirs: 'It's got cinematic disaster written all over it.'
Peter Capaldi
#16. I could never plan to have a career that went this well ... you know, there were times when it didn't: when it went into the toilet, or ducked, or was difficult to get moving.
Peter Capaldi
#17. The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned.
Peter Capaldi
#18. I hate restaurants that play music. You come out for a quiet meal, and you're supposed to put up with all this booming. Why? It's madness!
Peter Capaldi
#19. I don't mind being stereotyped as angry - it's good to have a job.
Peter Capaldi
#20. The higher your profile, the more people want you.
Peter Capaldi
#21. I failed the audition to get into drama school.
Peter Capaldi
#22. Believe it or not, one teacher used to call me a giant spastic for not being able to play football.
Peter Capaldi
#23. Recently, I dreamed that I returned home to find my wife had married Ray Winstone. They were kind and let me stay, but the whole thing was awkward.
Peter Capaldi
#24. I went to art school in the days when it was what you did if you didn't want to be like everybody else. You wanted to be strange and different, and art school encouraged that. We hated the drama students - they were guys with pipes and cardigans.
Peter Capaldi
#25. If people enjoy my profile from the privacy of their own home, that's entirely up to you.
Peter Capaldi
#26. Drawing is the only thing I've found in which I can lose myself completely. I love it. It started as something that relaxed me, but now it's a struggle because I'm pushing myself. The day-to-day sketching is fraught.
Peter Capaldi
#27. Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.
Peter Capaldi
#28. We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us.
Peter Capaldi
#29. I just consciously try to enjoy the good things that are happening. And if it ended tomorrow, that would be fine.
Peter Capaldi
#30. My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.
Peter Capaldi
#31. My adolescence was a kind of motorway pile-up. I wish I had known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.
Peter Capaldi
#32. In Peter Ackroyd's book 'London: The Biography,' he describes the route of the medieval wall that enclosed the original city. Take the book and follow it from the Tower of London via the Barbican to Ludgate Hill. You experience the real history of London.
Peter Capaldi
#33. The biggest thing I have realized was that you have to choose your collaborators very carefully, and that not everybody can like you. The process of filmmaking is so difficult, there's no point in doing it unless you can do it the way you want.
Peter Capaldi
#34. I haven't found anything to complain about. But being Scottish, it won't be long.
Peter Capaldi
#35. I was initially rather charmed by David Cameron, but I think he's revealing himself to be a slightly darker and less charismatic figure than he first appeared. There's a brutality about him.
Peter Capaldi
#37. One year was so bad for me and my wife that we were going to have to sell our house until Elaine decided to change career and earn some money.
Peter Capaldi
#38. A girl once came to my beery flat in Kensal Green, opened the blinds and cooked me breakfast. I married her.
Peter Capaldi
#39. We don't consider the Wizard of Oz or Father Christmas to be too old. They're still magical characters, and the fact they've been around the block only adds to their magic.
Peter Capaldi
#40. It's one thing getting the job of Doctor Who, which is wonderful. And then the next thing they say to you is, 'We're going to announce it live on television!' And you think, 'That's not exactly what I thought I was signing up for!'
Peter Capaldi
#41. 'Doctor Who' belongs to all of us. Everybody makes 'Doctor Who.'
Peter Capaldi
#42. Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?
Peter Capaldi
#43. I don't think I would have been great in the 17th century. I would have enjoyed the frocks, and certainly some of the food would have been appealing, but the disease and hygiene would have worried me.
Peter Capaldi
#44. Being asked to play 'The Doctor' is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can't wait to get started.
Peter Capaldi
#45. One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week.
Peter Capaldi
#46. I found American actors quite scary because they're brilliant actors and brilliantly funny, and they never stopped once you wound them up ... off they went and they just deliver fantastic stuff.
Peter Capaldi
#47. When I was at school, you couldn't draw and be into football, too. If you were into art, then you were seen as an absolute pansy, and there was no way you'd be admitted to the guys' world of football.
Peter Capaldi
#48. If you put me in a real Tardis, I dread to think what would happen to the universe.
Peter Capaldi
#49. I've been really terrible in a lot of things because I learned by making mistakes. That makes you a different kind of actor, because you have to figure out for yourself what you do.
Peter Capaldi
#51. The thing that runs through the British film industry even today is a lot of unsung movies are financially the bigger ones. Even though they weren't always the greatest of movies, something in them was very potent which people loved.
Peter Capaldi
#52. The nurses' job is emotional and distressing. Their day-to-day work is dealing with people withering and falling to pieces. So black humour is essential for them cope with that. It's just a consequence of their environment.
Peter Capaldi
#53. I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting, I want to kill myself: it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.
Peter Capaldi
#54. I know what 'Doctor Who' fans are like because I am a 'Doctor Who' fan myself. They're good people.
Peter Capaldi
#55. What I've learnt being an actor is that you've got to be lucky. I got less lucky, and nobody was interested. If a part came up, it would be for the main corpse's friend's brother who was having problems with his marriage.
Peter Capaldi
#56. If you actually have to engage with somebody who's superior to you and actually battle with them, struggle with them, I think it's more interesting, and funnier for the audience.
Peter Capaldi
#57. I'm creative. I can't relax unless I've got some project on the go. I'm somebody from art school, and art school during the punk era, when you just had a go at whatever came along.
Peter Capaldi
#58. I've lost count of the times I've been asked to 'be' Malcolm Tucker: to go on a political program on television, presumably in order to be the character and give opinions as him.
Peter Capaldi
#59. My family know not to get me any tech for Christmas. I can never get it to work, and it all becomes very tearful and pressurised.
Peter Capaldi
#60. I hated improvisation because in my early days as an actor, improvisation meant somebody had just come down from Oxford and they were doing a play above a pub in Kentish Town, and the biggest ego would win.
Peter Capaldi
#61. I think it's always exciting when 'Doctor Who' touches its past.
Peter Capaldi
#62. Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.
Peter Capaldi
#63. There are only a handful of really good TV programmes, and I'm blessed to be in one of them.
Peter Capaldi
#64. It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn't miserable, and it wasn't poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights.
Peter Capaldi
#65. I'm not saying that all politicians are awful. I don't know any of them well enough to say whether they're awful or not. But almost every day, you find out something about them that's appalling. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised any longer.
Peter Capaldi
#66. I'm fascinated by fire. When I was four, I wore an American fireman's hat all the time, and I still have one in my office today. Glasgow used to be called 'Tinderbox City;' there were always fires, people getting killed.
Peter Capaldi
#67. My parents didn't take me to the theatre to see Chekhov when I was growing up - we went to see 'Francie and Josie' once every five years.
Peter Capaldi
#68. Everywhere I go, I am The Doctor, and everyone smiles at me - they are pleased to see Doctor Who, who's far more exciting than I am.
Peter Capaldi
#69. I find the closer you get to people, the harder it is to satirise them.
Peter Capaldi
#70. I wake up in the morning, and I go, 'I'm Doctor Who! I'm playing Doctor Who. I'm Doctor Who.'
Peter Capaldi
#72. I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.
Peter Capaldi
#73. Before 'Local Hero,' I'd been knocking about Glasgow in rock bands, drinking too much and generally being 21. My opinion of actors was that they were straight and boring, so you see, I was completely unprepared for being one.
Peter Capaldi
#74. Hollywood producers aren't going to say, 'Get me that swearing, grey-haired, headless chicken. We need him for our new 'High School Musical' movie!'
Peter Capaldi
#76. 'Strictly Sinatra' became a compromise between me and the producers, and neither of us liked the results much.
Peter Capaldi
#77. I don't remember 'Doctor Who' not being part of my life, and it became a part of growing up, along with The Beatles, National Health spectacles, and fog. And it runs deep. It's in my DNA.
Peter Capaldi
#78. My family has to be very patient living with me, if you're playing a part that's not you. You have to get it right.
Peter Capaldi
#79. Personally, I have as little to do with politicians as possible. The ones that I've met I've found very boring. They're extremely egotistical, incredibly self-important. If I can help it, I try to stay as far away from them as possible.
Peter Capaldi
#80. I suppose I just like being arty. That's all. Arty.
Peter Capaldi
#81. What annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands. It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow.
Peter Capaldi
#82. Comic-Con is so legendary, so a great thrill to be invited along.
Peter Capaldi
#83. I got into music, I was in a band, I was at art school. I was quite trendy, although I'd hate to meet myself. The over-preening, the pretentiousness, the arrogance of youth! I think, 'Oh, that guy was so full of himself.'
Peter Capaldi
#84. I think the most extraordinary thing about fans is the level of excellence that they show in the work that they do. I mean, if you go onto the internet and see some of the fan videos that have been put together, they're just extraordinary; they could be programmes in their own right.
Peter Capaldi
#85. The difference between movies and TV is that in TV you have to have a trauma every week, but that event may not be the biggest event in the characters' lives.
Peter Capaldi
#86. I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos, and suddenly, you find yourself going one-to-one with this guy who you've been watching for years, watching every flicker in his eye and every detail on his face.
Peter Capaldi
#87. Maybe it's because I've been an actor for such a long time, but I think, unless you're a big star, you don't really have much control over anything. I've never been able to make any plans.
Peter Capaldi
#88. The biggest problem of all is that it's very difficult to tell my daughter, 'Swearing is not clever or funny,' because I earn a living by swearing.
Peter Capaldi
#89. It seems to me that most things that are being made are designed for young people. There aren't that many depictions of melancholic older people, even though they form a growing proportion of the population.
Peter Capaldi
#90. Generally I draw every day just to keep my hand in. I draw while I'm sitting on the Tube or in restaurants. Just doodling things and people I see.
Peter Capaldi
#91. What's now shocking is I can't say anything publicly without it having a life. Not because I have extraordinary views but because people are keen on conflict, so they'll make that the story.
Peter Capaldi
#92. I never really think of acting and directing as being separate; they are just different expressions of the same thing.
Peter Capaldi
#93. I didn't want to be Doctor Who in a 'Doctor Who' that I didn't like.
Peter Capaldi
#94. The older I get, the more I think lightness of touch is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
Peter Capaldi
#95. Even though I am a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan, I've not played him since I was nine. I downloaded old scripts and practised those in front of the mirror.
Peter Capaldi
#96. The only person that I want to love me is my wife.
Peter Capaldi
#97. If I had gone to drama school, I wouldn't be sitting here now because it would have blanded me out; it would have just turned me into another actor.
Peter Capaldi
#98. It's weathered many a storm, but the British film industry is, thankfully, still afloat.
Peter Capaldi
#99. Keep going and don't give up. You're doing wonderfully. You'll know how to fly this thing eventually.
Peter Capaldi
#100. Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh.
Peter Capaldi
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