Citations

Actors say they do their own stunts for the integrity of the film but I did them because they looked like a lot of fun.

I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

As soon as I see period costume, I turn off. It's like hearing drama on Radio 4.

I don't want to be someone who's trying to spin this public image of me. I have had some negative tabloid press, I'm sure you're aware [I am], but I don't like to portray myself as somehow a nice, well-rounded person.

In comic acting, to improvise effectively is quite difficult. A lot of actors can improvise up to a certain level - an entry level, which is when you see the actors having more fun than the audience.

The big comic performance is a very obvious thing to do. The bolder, more inventive thing sometimes is the subtler, understated performance with minute shades and variations. If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

The 'News of the World' is a misogynistic, single parent-hating, asylum seeker-hating newspaper, and it's gone to the wall, and I'm delighted.

I have never wanted to be famous, as such - fame is a by-product. Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do. One could argue that there are those who make their career out of being famous and those people do enter into a Faustian pact, where they use the press to raise their profile. They exploit the press for their own ends. They are in the fame game.

I don't talk about my personal life. I don't go in Hello! magazine to get a free kitchen because I show them my kitchen. I like to be creative, but I'm not interested in being recognized.

People have made the observation, which is entirely valid, that Steve Coogan's becoming more like Alan Partridge. It's not actually true. Alan Partridge is becoming more and more like me.

When my life has been the subject of tabloid intrusion, what I have never done is get engaged in justifying myself. Celebrities who go round apologizing are pitiful, and don't do themselves any favors.

[on the Leveson Inquiry into the British press] I got involved in Leveson because I knew no one else in the public eye would. They didn't want to take the risk. I thought the way the press behaved - and yes it was towards me, but also towards a lot of other people who didn't have a voice like me - was just wrong.

I'm not Mother Teresa, but I'm not Frank Bough either.

[Dec. 2013] I'm reading is "How To Live: Or a Life of Montaigne," by Sarah Bakewell. It's about this Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne who wrote essays that together form a kind of manual on how to live your life, only he wrote it in the 1500s. It resonates still today. It's about not having to aspire to live in some perfect way but to somehow embrace your flaws. It's quite liberating and comforting.

I love "The Onion" on YouTube. It's one of the funniest things out there. And I like watching documentaries on BBC4. They don't insult your intelligence. But I have guilty pleasures, too. If I want to really dumb down, I'll watch Banged Up Abroad (2007). It's about people who get into trouble and get locked up in foreign prisons. If you're having a bad day, you look at that and think, you know what, I may be having a bad day, but I'm not locked up in a foreign prison.

I like cars. I have about 10 - all British cars. I have a Lotus, Morgan, Aston Martin. I don't really drive them much because I'm scared of damaging them. I just clean them and look at them and sometimes I take them out on a Sunday up and down the road and then I come back and clean them again.

I don't have a Twitter thing. I don't do Facebook. I don't do any of that. I'm holding out.

[on his multifaceted contributions to 'Philomena'] It was a cathartic experience for me. Comedy as an end in itself is like chocolate - enjoyable and not very nourishing. Why are people so scared of sincerity? I wanted to talk about important things.. I'm not portentous or self-righteous. I've still got prosaic tastes. I like cars! I'm not joyless.

I don't like modern jazz. I like smoother jazz, but not so smooth that it veers toward Chris De Burgh. That would be wrong.