Douglas Henshall

Douglas:( on his character Professor Nick Cutter in Primeval) Professor Cutter who I play in Primeval always does the right thing and it gets a bit boring. You think 'Can you not just smack him in the mouth if he's going to do that to you.' It's nice to play someone who doesn't always do the right thing.

Douglas:( on religion and the Christian church) I loathe religion of all forms. I think the Church especially is resposible for more pain, more suffering that any other thing on the planet. I would have those people involved in it shot.

Douglas:(on his character Cromwell Marsh in Gentlememen's Relish) He's essentially got a good heart but he's also got his eye on the main chance, he's ambitious but he doesn't really know how to get anywhere. But he spots an opportunity to work with Kingdom Swan and then spots another opportunity to make money out of him. But he loves and adores Swann and he wouldn't harm him for the world. Cromwell Marsh is an opportunist with a good heart basically.

Douglas (what it was like being a Scottish actor when he was starting out): At that time, we were allowed to play psychopaths and alcoholics. I remember my agent suggesting that I went into meetings talking in an English accent, which I refused to do, pointedly. But then Danny Boyle made it first of all acceptable and then fashionable. With Shallow Grave, he made people realise that if it was set in Scotland, it didn't have to be about eating haggis. And with Trainspotting it very much became cool to be Scottish.

Douglas : (on the character Robert Dunbar in Sea of Souls) My take on Dunbar is that he's a man who can't or won't accept that his wife is dying. He has a power to stop that from happening so he's going to do anything he can to stop it and his morality just goes flying out the window. He's a decent man who makes the wrong choice or a few wrong choices. So essentially he's a villain but I don't think he's necessarily a bad man.

Douglas : (on why he thinks Primeval is a success) People want to get back to being properly entertained. I don't want to watch another programme about 12 people losing weight! Recently we've had an upsurge of people going, 'OK, enough reality TV'. It would be nice to remind people what was so great about Saturday nights and the best thing about Primeval is that it's good entertainment.

Douglas : ( on reading the stories about Sherlock Holmes) I enjoyed them so much that I read them all, the novels though possibly not all the short stories,just for pleasure. They are a great read. And obviously I love all the films, Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett were great Holmes.

Douglas : (on playing Arthur Conan Doyle) Arthur Conan Doyle had a lot to deal with,the childhood problems with his father who then died alone in an asylum, his wife's tuberculosis and his love for another woman. It was a lot to deal with and he was in turmoil. Nowadays he could get help, but he had to cope alone with the guilt and the grief.

Douglas: (on playing in large London theatres) Large theatres are just a big black space and a rustle of sweet papers, but in small ones, you get to see the audience.

Douglas: (on the Royal Shakespeare Company) I suppose it's like playing for Liverpool or Manchester United. You are so aware of the sense of history that has gone before you - Gielgud, Olivier. It's a wee bit like working in a sausage factory.

Douglas: (on the possibility of failure) I don't mind failure or success on a huge level. You don't learn by playing safe - you just get more scared about it the next time. You learn through failing.

Douglas: (on talking about his looks) I'm not conventional leading man material, I don't have the old square jaw and perfect teeth, so I suppose a lot of people find it difficult to cast me that way because I'm not the kind of actor that is going to be on every 16-year-old's wall. I'm kind of over myself that way. Anybody who thinks talent is the only thing that matters in this business is going to have a very, very sorry life, because it's not. But I'm doing all right.

Douglas (on auditioning) I could get down to the last two, but they would always go with the other guy. But I think that was something to do with me. Sometimes the worst smell in the world is desperation, and I could never disguise how much I wanted it.

Douglas: (on being Scottish) I do believe in my national identity. I'm very proud of what I come from and where I come from, and there are values up there that I like and that I hold on to: loyalty I suppose, and a sense of humour, and a lack of self pity.

Douglas: (talking about his stage work) When you've got an audience, there's a silence in there that you don't find anywhere else. And it's really powerful. People are there listening with you and you're affecting them in some way.

Douglas: (on the role of Levin in Anna Karenina) Levin is like the voice of Leo Tolstoy. He's probably one of the first existentialists, someone who hides guns and ropes in the shed to take away the temptation to shoot or hang himself. It's the idea of the perfect woman, Kitty, that keeps him alive.

Douglas: (About Nick Cutter) If I was to try and sum him up, he's reluctantly optimistic. He's a career scientist – there for the love of the job rather than anything else. He explains to Connor that he's looking for the bits that Darwin missed. Any possibility of finding something new and interesting and real is his kind of thing. He looks forward to his work. As far as his wife is concerned, I think that's just one of those big things that certain people have, and have to live with, but I think it makes him slightly open-minded to all these things.

Douglas: (About Nick Cutter) Well for someone who is playing an all-action hero, I have a number of phobias which aren't particularly tough or indeed heroic.
I'm a bit claustrophobic, I've never done any deep water diving before in my life and I have vertigo.
Not a great start really, and in the space of one series I was asked to confront and deal with each of those fears in front of the entire cast and crew!

Douglas: (On filming primeval) There was our cameraman sitting on a quad-bike, which was doubling as the Gorgonopsid, chasing us through the woods at 30 miles an hour, and that was the day when I thought "here I am, in the woods, pretending to run away from a 30-foot dinosaur - this is absolutely what I signed up for.