#Quote1The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to start thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a character trait than height. It is just a physical fact, and that's all there is to it.2[as presenter at the 2008 BAFTA Awards] Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be. The point is that it should be. The original screenplay is the most precious commodity of all. In the original screenplay, the writer creates the heart, the mind, the skeleton, the sinew, the epithelial membrane, if you will, of the show.3[on performing the blues] Let the record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American South. I know how it must look. I suppose, in my defence, I was trying to get people to examine what authenticity means. Is it authentic to have American actors playing Shakespeare? Or indeed to have an Englishman play an American doctor?4I sometimes think that in this YouTube age - God, I sound like such an old fart - history has gone vertical rather than horizontal. You can click on "St. James Infirmary", let's say [and] see a hip-hop version of that done three months ago or hear Louis Armstrong from nearly 100 years ago. And there's almost no sense of separation or context, or of a progression through time.5[on jamming in a jazz club in New Orleans] I can't deny it was, without a doubt, the most frightening thing I've done. To stand up and play music to an audience is a very, very daunting but wonderful experience. Many things in life are daunting and wonderful if your survive them. Being attacked by a lion is probably brilliant, but the survival part is important.6[BBC, May 2011 on his record deal] In life, you don't regret the things you do, you regret the things you don't do.7[on the possibility of staying in Los Angeles after House M.D. (2004)]: I can certainly imagine it, in a way I couldn't have done before. It held no appeal for me before, but I do have an affection for the place now. Maybe once the show finishes, I will see it in a different way. For now, I'm in a gilded cage.8[What does he like most about House M.D. (2004)?]: I suppose I am drawn to people who worry, who are tortured. I find I am always faintly suspicious of happy people. I always think there is something going wrong or missing somewhere. They would probably argue that I am the one with the thing missing, and that may be so. But the fact that he is not happy makes a lot of his mis­demeanours more forgivable. If someone is behaving badly, yet remains unhappy and tortured, the bad behaviour is very often its own punishment, so it's hard to be too upset by it.9Yes, I still like him [House M.D. (2004)] very, very much. I know he has problems, and he is not necessarily a good man. But I realised long ago that one doesn't only like good people. Sometimes one doesn't even like good people.10I used to worry much more about the prospect of failure. That 200 people were going to be out of a job. That shame and disgrace would attach, and I would have my acting uniform stripped from me.11[on working nine-to-ten-hour days, five days a week in Hollywood]: It's a way of living that, had you described it to me 10 years ago, I would have just found absurd beyond belief, inconceivable. But here we are. Yes, there were plenty of times when it was pretty overwhelming, I think for everybody. Like anybody completely absorbed in a single thing, it's rather unhealthy. It's the sort of thing you can do for a certain period of time - in a sort of emergency state - but you can't live like that indefinitely because you start popping rivets. Look, it sounds like I'm moaning. I am constantly aware of my good fortune. But the thing is, almost nothing in this life is as easy as it looks. I did work very, very hard - I do still - but it has been very rewarding, very enjoyable, and I work with a terrific bunch of people. So I feel blessed.12[Was he shocked at the success of House M.D. (2004)]: I still am. There are a lot of days when I feel as if I have been woken from a coma and told six years have gone by, and I have no awareness of it. Is Queen Elizabeth II still on the throne? Do we still drive on the left? Do we still have pounds?13[on living at the Chateau Marmont during the first season of House M.D. (2004)]: I was so convinced the whole thing was going to fail, I couldn't contemplate committing to any long-term arrangement. I thought a hotel was a safe bet.14[on the novel "The Paper Soldier", his sequel to his bestselling "The Gun Seller"]: My second novel will be coming out two years ago.15[after he received his 2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards] I actually had a 100 dollars on James Spader, this is just not my night.16Recalling his father winning a gold medal in rowing at the 1948 Olympics in London: He was in a coxless pair with a man called Jack Wilson. I've got a fantastic picture on my desk of the two of them getting their medals on a pontoon at Henley. I imagine they were playing the national anthem and my dad is very rigid, "This is the way to behave", and Jack Wilson is loose and groovy and looks like he should be mixing a martini. I sometimes wished my father could take that pleasure in himself.17Something in me says you shouldn't have toys.18Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation. The people I admire are those blokes in Fair Isle sweaters with pencils behind their ears who knew how to design mechanical things better than anybody else in the world.19I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.20When asked if living in America would make him any less pessimistic or miserable: Oh, I hope nothing would ever do that. I won't let go of my roots.21On living in America while filming House M.D. (2004): I do feel very foreign there, as if I'm on safari, looking at the exotic animals and the way they behave. Then again America is made up of people who don't feel American until they do, so I'm not alone in that.22Obviously you are in a very vulnerable position when you give an interview. You are putting your testicles on a chopping board. I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done. I can't bear going through the same f***ing dance of despair.23Guilt I can do. If [I have] any expertise at all, it's in the area of guilt. I have a black belt in guilt. If you ever want a guilt-off, the next time we meet let's see how we match up. I'm pretty confident in that area.24[his speech after winning a Golden Globe Award for House M.D. (2004)] I am absolutely speechless. Seriously, I don't have a speech. People are falling all over themselves to send you free shoes and free cuff links and colonic irrigations for two. Nobody ever offers you a free acceptance speech. There just seems to be a gap in the market. I would love to be able to pull out a speech by Dolce & Gabbana.25[on the difficulty of performing with an American accent] It's as if you're playing left-handed. Or like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and you have a salmon.26I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific. So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern. If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea. But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil. Maybe that's why I took up boxing. It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi.27[on raising his daughter] Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.28I travel to work on my motorcycle, so it's jeans, boots and a brown Aero leather jacket that weighs as much as I do. If it were black, it would seem like I've got a [Marlon Brando] idea going on, which I don't.29[on what he misses about England] The buildings and the cruelty. They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them. L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.30[on his late father's reaction to his character Dr. Gregory House] He would be absolutely appalled. He was an endlessly polite, generous and soft-spoken man. He was no pushover, but he would never hurt, shock or outrage people just for the hell of it. At the same time, I hope he would be entertained and see that science and logic are like a religion to House. He'd approve of that.31I picked a reverence for medicine because I rather hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't admire crystals and chewing willow bark and herbal remedies.32[on picking up his new hobby] Boxing is fascinating. It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy. I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing. It's ritual humiliation. I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.33[on the Oxford-vs.-Cambridge Boat Race] The year was 1980, I was #4 in this particular encounter, and the result was a loss by Cambridge by a distance of five feet, which is something which I will carry to my grave... in fact, I shouldn't really say this, because I still to this day wouldn't want to give any pleasure or satisfaction to the opposing crew. But yes, it's true, it was a very bitter defeat.34[on Cambridge] I went there to row. I'll be blunt with it. It's been ten years, and I think the admissions tutor can take it now... but that's really what I went for, and anthropology was the most convenient subject to read while spending eight hours a day on the river.

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