RAFE SPALL

My biggest ambition over everything is to have kids. It feels great. I'd love a big family.

My mum and dad have always enjoyed life, and it's something that's been instilled in me. I wake up in a good mood most mornings.

I'll probably always be 'Timothy Spall's son' and it's something I'm proud of. Maybe one day as well as that, they'll say of Timothy Spall that 'He's Rafe Spall's dad'.

By the age of 18, I was very fat. My dad would say there's a Spall fat gene. But I was fat because I ate loads. I used to go and buy six or seven chocolate bars and eat my way through them.

For a man, there's a big responsibility that comes with having a boy because men are made by their fathers. If you've got a good productive man around it's better. I have such a close relationship with my dad and that responsibility to produce a good man is something I think about.

If you're a casting director, you're going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall's son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.

There's nothing so unattractive as vanity... particularly male vanity.

I never mind talking about my dad. I'm proud of who he is, and being his son is one of the things I'm most proud of. To be constantly compared to someone so brilliant, who happens to be your dad, is cool.

My dad's one of the funniest men in the world. I grew up with him making me laugh so much I'd beg him to stop.

I've done loads of things people have never seen - dramas on BBC4 and plays upstairs at the Royal Court and the Bush - and because I didn't go to drama school, they gave me an education.

I'm sure that my father becoming seriously ill when I was 14 had a lot to do with my going from chubby to fat.

Because I was always a fat child, I got fatter and fatter, and I ended up 18 stone and with a 40-inch waist.

One of the biggest gifts you can give a child is confidence, because confidence will take you miles - more than talent, more than anything else. So yes, I want my children to have confidence and to be kind.

Being kind is the most important thing I've ever been taught. That's what my parents always told me - more important than ambition or success is being kind to people. The cornerstone of my life. What I aspire to is to be kind.

Every audition I get, I agonise over and I put everything I can into it.

When you do a film, you get picked up in a car, lunch is free. Theatre is really hard, and you get absolutely no money.

As an actor, you try and be cool, but one of the reasons you become an actor is because you're a film fan. And then you're like, 'Oh my God, Ridley Scott just spoke to me!'

Doing 'Prometheus' was what you imagine being an actor is like when you're five. In a spacesuit, on another planet, getting killed by an alien. It was a real treat; it felt like being a part of movie history.

It's properly scary playing a leading man. Growing up, I always wanted to be a character actor.

I think one of the main differences between being an English actor and being an American actor is that we have things like the class system in England.I'm middle class. But I've got what some people might consider to be a working-class accent, so you've got those sorts of elements in this country to consider, which, in America, exist, but not necessarily in the same way.

I watched what I ate for a bit and did a bit of exercise. I wanted to look alright because I knew I had to take my clothes off and I knew I was starring alongside some extremely attractive women! I think it was Humphrey Bogart who said that the only reason people found him attractive was because of the attractive women he played opposite. So, as audience member you go: "Well, if she would find him attractive, then surely I must too!" Playing opposite beautiful actress of the calibre of Rose Byrne and Anna Faris is amazing - it does a lot of the work for you.

In any kind of comic scene you're going to perhaps push the boundaries of plausibility but as long as there is some semblance of logic I think as an audience you'll buy it and as an actor, when it comes to playing things like that, it gives you something to delve into. When I don't buy into a comic scene is the type of scenario where you'd just go: "Well, that would never happen."

I’ve been an actor for 10 years now, and if anything I want to talk more about my dad. He taught me that even if you get past the casting director’s door you’ve still got to do your homework: you’ve still got to work hard.

You do stuff that gets a reaction and you think 'that's a winner' and then it never sees the light of day. But the thing with improvisation is that 90% of what you come up with won't be used and for good reason. But you keep going for the occasional gem that you might come up with. You do a scene and a lot of the time. We wouldn't cut. So, you come up with something that might be funny and then you go, 'alright, what else'? So, you kind of throw stuff against the wall and see what happens. But you've got to be prepared to make a fool of yourself.

I was nervous about playing a lead part in a Working Title romantic comedy and I was also nervous about the fact that I not only had to take my clothes off, but get my willy out. There's certain things you can do to make yourself look better, but there's nothing you can do about your willy. Your willy is your willy and no amount of working out is going to make your willy look any different. You get what you're given. But I wanted to look my best and to whip myself into any semblance of handsomeness. And that was hard going.