Geraldine McEwan Quotes

I feel I could be walking down the street, and if somebody talked to me, I could just slot into 'Miss Marple' and know how she would react.

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.

When I first started out, I absolutely begged my agent to get me a Poirot audition, and my wish came true - I did a Poirot! I need to do a Marple to round it off.

I absolutely adore Agatha Christie; so much so that when I received a kitten for my Christmas present, I called her Agatha, and I already have a cat called Hercule!

I thought I was the wrong shape: that Miss Marple would be much fluffier than me, much more wearing shawls and things. But I was persuaded, and now, well - I can only do it my way.

I'm a big reader, so when I was in 'Pride and Prejudice,' or, like, in Poirots and Marples, those are all books that I loved, and so it was really exciting for me to inhabit characters from literature that I knew and recognized.

I've been in an Agatha Christie called 'The Sittaford Mystery,' which I enjoyed, but 'The Pale Horse' has a real sense of intrigue and the jigsaw pieces fitting together.

I was reading Agatha Christie as a little boy.

I decided to read something I normally hate: a cosy mystery. You know one of those mysteries where everything is tidily wrapped up at the end and everyone lives happily ever after? An Agatha Christie kind of mystery. They are so not my thing. But then someone was raving about Barbara Neely's Blanche White books and they sounded interesting.

I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.

ITV and the production company contacted me and asked if I fancied playing the role [of Maigret]. It took me a long time to decide to do it. In fact, I decided not to. I thought about it for some weeks, and thought 'perhaps not' and it went away for a while, and then it sort of came back. They said 'Are you sure you don't want to play him?', so I thought about it for a lot longer again, and eventually decided that I would.

I'm not cut out to be a detective on 'Law & Order' - I laugh too easily.

Agatha Christie's writing is incredibly skillful because her books are incredibly intellectually puzzling and challenging.

I was never a fan of cozy mysteries of anything set in the countryside, you know.

I used to audition for 'NYPD Blue' quite a bit, so I had this stock New York detective character that I would bring in for all their auditions.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I'm a writer; I've worked as much as a writer as I have as an actor, so I was in a script-note session at Imagine for a TV show I wrote that they were producing, and they happened to say, 'You'd be great as Crosby, do you want to do this show we're doing, 'Parenthood?'

One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.

The good thing about being on a show like 'Justified' is that you stick to the premise, but not necessarily every single word that's on the page.

As an actor, you are always someone else's tool. You can have a connection with them, and you can share their point of view, but ultimately, you are helping them reflect.

We all grew up aware of Agatha Christie; there is no writer more prolific than her in England.

Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: 'Are you kidding? He's not an English aristocrat.'

I took one acting class as an undergrad, and I loved it. I was in a very avant-garde play at UCLA about a closeted, married homosexual. I played his father.

For starters, I wanted to do an acting role in a movie that had nothing to do with the music business or in which I would play a singer or a songwriter. When I act, I don't even want to be thought of as Ne-Yo.