Quotes

Doctor Who (1963) gave me a chance to indulge my passion for dressing up and being able to have some sly fun as well as a bit of clowning.

I've done a lot of swashbuckling in my time - ever since Joy Harington gave me my first real television chance in Kidnapped (1956).

I'm ready to play anything.

If, as a character actor, you go around promoting your own personality, you're defeating the very thing you're trying to achieve as an actor, which is to be anonymous as a person and only emerge as somebody else on screen. That's the main reason I've stayed away from interviews. It's like a conjurer telling you how he does his tricks all the time.

When I finished in the role I was fairly young and I had to get back to the variety of roles which I had been doing. Otherwise, if you stay too long you come into a play and everyone says, 'Oh, it's Doctor Who!' And that's no good. You must try and get them to forget -- hoodwink them into forgetting.

[on his versatile reputation] I just take what part comes along. It's like a great big lucky dip, it's lovely. Different people see me as different things.

I have been asked what impact the part of the Doctor had on my career and I can honestly say none. For luckily I got out in time before I was too typecast.

If I had not been an actor I would quite like to have been a teacher. Children keep one young.

How did I feel about taking on the role? To begin with, I thought it would last about six weeks after Billy Hartnell [William Hartnell] had finished. My children and I had been fans of the programme and I loved the way he had played the Doctor. But I knew I couldn't possibly do it like that.

It seems so long ago that I played the part of the Doctor.

I think space will be conquered through the mind rather than the clumsy medium of space travel.

I've played so many different parts in the last 40 years.

[on Doctor Who (1963)] I believed totally in the possibilities implied in the series. I never thought of it as fantasy. Far from it.

I think acting is magic. If I tell you all about myself it will spoil it

[on playing the Doctor] I had a whale of a time!

[on playing the Doctor] It was the happiest time of my professional life.