COLIN FIRTH

I do think I'm a character actor.

I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.

They're not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it's not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques.

People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.

Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

Hollywood hasn't aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.

Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.

In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.

Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.

If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.

Some people would say comedy draws from some dark places, from your dark stuff. Life's great optimists aren't necessarily the funniest people.

I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine.

The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.

I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

We've always been involved with America - I have a son who lives there and it's a big part of my life.

I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.

I'm not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don't get it right or don't respect others' needs.

I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.