James Purefoy

James: Without fail, every day I lose my keys, credit card and dignity.

James: Breeches are fine, in their place. The trouble with breeches is that it makes you realize what it's like to be a woman with large breasts. There's just no eye contact.

James: How can anyone drink Diet Coke? The after-taste of a Diet Coke is like licking a cat's bottom.

James: If you find yourself always playing the villain, or if you find yourself being typecast into a corner where you're not happy then that's probably rather miserable, but if I have been typecast I am quite happy about it. I'm trying to work out what I have been typecast as. I don't know.

James: The age of chivalry isn't dead, is it? It doesn't even have to be a man or a woman that you could be chivalrous to. If somebody's in trouble you give them a hand.

James: (on filming in Rome) To go to work every day and see the sun coming up over the Forum and the Colosseum and then to go into the Forum for work - it's a strange feeling.

James: (on his costume in the series, Rome) Mark Antony was fabulously rich, so all his costumes are bespoke tailoring. I could have slept in them and often did. There's nothing wrong with wearing a skirt!

James: (how much he knew of his character on Rome beforehand) Certainly for Mark Antony, there is a preconceived notion of who he was. You have an idea of him as this great romantic lover and military general - we've been fed the stories down from Shakespeare and we have this idea of Marlon Brando and Richard Burton. But when you do the research and you read some of these ancient texts, it's not like that. He was a wine-drinking, fighting drunkard. A favourite party trick of his was to dress up as Dionysus, the god of wine, and drive around Rome in a chariot pulled by six lions.