Class Diversity Quotes

There is a lot more opportunity now, and I welcome all the conversations we are having about diversity, about women and about class... I come from a very working-class background, and I think the class thing is still probably more tricky.

'Suits' fans. I've never met a more diverse audience: across gender, race, class. It's incredible. People who are high-powered lawyers to doormen. A Chinese immigrant cable installer - who barely spoke English - loves 'Suits!'

We concentrate too much on ethnic diversity and not enough on class. It's dead important to represent loads of different cultures. But what the BBC doesn't do enough of is thinking about getting people from more working-class backgrounds.

When my father was a young actor, it is absolutely true that the vast majority were fairly middle class. Then all of a sudden, people like Albert Finney burst through and turned all that on its head.

It was a competitive examination [in Boston Latin School]. Poor kids, Brahmans, middle-class kids. The masters, as the teachers were called, didn't give a damn about - how we felt, what was - things like at home. I mean, this goes against the current grain. All they thought about was: 'You're here. You made the exam. You can do the work. And if you can't, we'll throw you out.'

In terms of negotiating a career - I've always grown up being an insider and an outsider to different worlds, across different classes and cultures, so I have always naturally liked making films or music that puts things in unexpected places.

I spent two years working on building sites, working on the railways as a guard and in a racing stable, exercising racehorses. I learnt to build relationships. The experience of not being stuck in some middle-class bubble taught me things that being at university hadn't.

Schools should be integrated by race and by class.