I'm sure that my father becoming seriously ill when I was 14 had a lot to do with my going from chubby to fat.

My mum and dad have always enjoyed life, and it's something that's been instilled in me. I wake up in a good mood most mornings.

There's nothing so unattractive as vanity... particularly male vanity.

If you're a casting director, you're going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall's son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.

I'll probably always be 'Timothy Spall's son' and it's something I'm proud of. Maybe one day as well as that, they'll say of Timothy Spall that 'He's Rafe Spall's dad'.

I've done loads of things people have never seen, dramas on BBC4 and plays upstairs at the Royal Court and the Bush, and because I didn't go to drama school, they gave me an education.

My biggest ambition over everything is to have kids. It feels great. I'd love a big family.

When you do a film, you get picked up in a car, lunch is free. Theatre is really hard, and you get absolutely no money.

As an actor, you try and be cool, but one of the reasons you become an actor is because you're a film fan. And then you're like, 'Oh my god, Ridley Scott just spoke to me!'

My dad's one of the funniest men in the world. I grew up with him making me laugh so much I'd beg him to stop.

Because I was always a fat child, I got fatter and fatter, and I ended up 18 stone and with a 40-inch waist.

Being hated isn't easy, you know. You just cannot falter meeting their expectations.

...I expected a gift, you know, something nice and useless...

The purpose of teachers should be to add to the sum of human knowers rather than the sum of human knowledge.

Day dreaming is actually research for the next book.

I retired at age 40 because my daughters looked at me one day and said: 'Dad, being bald and wearing shorts doesn't look good together'.

Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world

The more you work, the more people can see that you're something different from what's come before.

I cannot be contained because I am the container.

You need to be sharp the whole race, and eventually you start getting mentally tired and make little mistakes over and over.

Any piece of art, when you're putting it on a certain platform, if the platform becomes a political place, you can manipulate things.