Peter Capaldi
Peter Capaldi
Peter Dougan Capaldiis a Scottish actor, writer and director, best known for being the twelfth and current actor to play the title role in the long-running BBC One sci-fi series Doctor Who. He has played numerous roles in film and television including the role of Malcolm Tucker, a spin doctor in the BBC comedy series The Thick of It and its film spinoff In the Loop, for which he has received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth14 April 1958
CityGlasgow, Scotland
There are only a handful of really good TV programmes, and I'm blessed to be in one of them.
I hate the Internet. It's full of rubbish. I'm on it all the time, watching terrible, useless things and ossifying my brain.
I hated improvisation because in my early days as an actor, improvisation meant somebody had just come down from Oxford and they were doing a play above a pub in Kentish Town, and the biggest ego would win.
I find the closer you get to people, the harder it is to satirise them.
What I've learnt being an actor is that you've got to be lucky. I got less lucky, and nobody was interested. If a part came up, it would be for the main corpse's friend's brother who was having problems with his marriage.
What annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands. It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow.
You can't blame anyone for being cynical about politicians.
The best advice is to get on with it. I'm very prone to falling into depressions - not clinical, just 'can't be bothered.' It's such a waste of time.
If I had gone to drama school, I wouldn't be sitting here now because it would have blanded me out; it would have just turned me into another actor.
Every viewer who ever turned on 'Doctor Who' has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.
Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh.
My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.
The nurses' job is emotional and distressing. Their day-to-day work is dealing with people withering and falling to pieces. So black humour is essential for them cope with that. It's just a consequence of their environment.
What you're doing is acting with yourself. Well, I'm my favourite actor, so in a way it's quite straightforward for me.