Matthew Macfadyen
Matthew Macfadyen
David Matthew Macfadyenis a BAFTA award-winning English actor, known for his roles as MI5 Intelligence Officer Tom Quinn in the BBC television drama series Spooks, Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 2005 film of Pride & Prejudice and Daniel in the Frank Oz comedy Death at a Funeral. He is also known for portraying John Birt in the political drama Frost/Nixon, as well as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid in the BBC series Ripper Street. In 2015 he starred in the Sky Living...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth17 October 1974
I've worried more and more as the years have gone on. The more you're seen to be doing well, the more stress there is. You feel you ought to consider things more, and be more fussy - there's further to fall. All these little worries.
I think I do have a good eye. It's quite liberating, being in a position to read a script and say, 'No.' It's really the only power you have, as an actor.
I don't think his behavior changes that much, ... It's the way people perceive him that changes.
You got the more sugary one. The Brits hated it.
I have felt some twinges recently, about parts I wanted to play that I may be getting too old and fat to do. 'Hamlet,' for example - maybe that's gone. I would love to play Richard II.
I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.
Nobody's just arrogant. I've met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they're vulnerable - that that hauteur or standoffishiness is because they're pedaling furiously underneath.
I'd auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and I didn't get a place and it was terrifying.
Apart from earning an awful lot of money, why would you go to Hollywood?
I was quite a shy child. I would get terribly nervous and throw up before my birthday party. And then I would be fine. I feel the same now. I get nervous, then it's fine.
No one will guide you in the right direction, in the end you have to learn for yourself. You have to grow up yourself.
You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.
The actor in me would always like to be more dashing, or slimmer, or have nicer hair.
As much as I long for a sort of security and consistency sometimes, I do enjoy sort of being busted around. I really don't know what's happening sometimes next week, let alone this year.