RICHARD AYOADE

I don't really know what my personality is anyway. I don't really have one.

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

I actually prefer night shoots to days. I prefer being up. It's easier for me. I'm more of a night person.

Louis Malle is maybe one of my favorite directors, but I love Tarantino.

The act of seeing any film generally is you knowing more than the characters, even if it's the classic Hitchcock shot of two people talking and a bomb being under the table. Part of the pleasure of it is seeing where people go wrong, and the irony of situations.

I'm just terrible. At talking. With words.

I've only ever really been in shows of friends, so I don't know exactly what happened. I think I'm incredibly cheap to hire. That can buy some traction. I'm as cheap as it's possible for an actor to be legally.

As in, I think 'Badlands' is one of the funniest films of all time: 'Every day I wish I was carried off to a magical land, but that never happened' is one of the funniest lines in any film.

I'm not good at watching myself.

I like Roy Orbison's video for 'I Drove All Night' because it's so literal. It is just a man driving throughout the night. I like that silliness. To be in a video is a ridiculous thing. It's almost impossible to do it without any humour.

No. I really don't think I'm cool. I'm not.

I'm not sure I'd hire myself in anything. I certainly couldn't be an actor. That would be terrible. For everyone.

My parents didn't go to university and weren't brought up in England. They hadn't heard of any other universities other than 'Cambridge' or 'Oxford.'

I suppose I sort of like effects that have some organic elements rather than ones that are entirely generated by a computer. Just because, no matter how complex the algorithm is, it's still an algorithm.

I was directing before I started doing 'The IT Crowd.' It wasn't something that led on after acting I guess. I was sort of doing this stuff before acting.

I find performing very difficult. It's difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, 'Well, why do it?'

I'm not a terribly social person, and so I have to really like people to work with them.

Cars are good for entrances and exits. And there is something about driving that is quite cliched in a funny way. I like Roy Orbison's video for I Drove All Night because it's so literal. It is just a man driving throughout the night. I like that silliness. To be in a video is a ridiculous thing. It's almost impossible to do it without any humour.

The most interesting part of filming is what the actors do. That's the primary link between the story and the audience.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good.

I only ever privately tell people stuff for the scene. And I often ask what they feel is right. Normally, by the time that we're filming, if it doesn't work, it always the script.

I think there's nothing worse than telling actors what to do in front of everyone, because then on the next take, everyone's waiting to see if you do that ... Everyone watches. It's just the worst thing.

I've always felt that actors in my experience have a very good and accurate instinct about whether something feels right or not. They just have a sense because they have to literally do it.

I'm pretty bad at seeing new films.