I've only three times in my career felt I absolutely had to play a part and the first two I got close and was vetoed - by the same person actually. So when 'Strike' came along I had no qualms about signing on for something I was potentially still going to be doing in 10 years.

Tom Burke

I mean, happiness is a slippery thing. What makes you happy one day can make you miserable the next.

Tom Burke

Sometimes people hide behind a kind of naturalistic milieu. But life is full of the most sharp, abrupt changes of tone, from the tragic to the absurd.

Tom Burke

The Souvenir is an incredibly specific story, but people recognise the universal in it. Because, that's how stories work.

Tom Burke

Regional theatres don't patronise their audiences, and they're not afraid to do big, bold things.

Tom Burke

I think there's a dark and twisted idea of democracy that everybody is as interesting as everybody else. So we mustn't make anybody too interesting. There's an ironing out of edges and eccentricities, idiosyncrasies in people and situations.

Tom Burke

But the fact I'm even getting to play a character that the producer, director and writers want me to play is a rarity in the industry. You'd think it happens all the time. It doesn't. There are so many hoops to jump through to get cast in something.

Tom Burke

I feel like an expressionist nihilist deep in my heart. And I think nihilism can stop the wheel from going around, around, around, around, around - saying the same thing, reacting the same way.

Tom Burke

I got a pommel in my eye. A pommel is the end of a sword - not the sharp end, the other end. It wasn't actually a sword fight. I was rugby tackling somebody but we hadn't rehearsed with all the kit on so suddenly there's a whole other part of the equation and that did really hurt.

Tom Burke

I was diagnosed dyslexic, but I should point out I don't think it majorly impacted on me. I don't feel that I overcame great odds. If anything it just pushed me in a certain direction that wasn't academia or maths or science.

Tom Burke

I think 'The Musketeers' is probably the Dumas novel people are most familiar with, or if not that, it's 'The Count Of Monte Cristo'. I've always been a big fan of Dumas because, on the one hand, he writes a lot about revenge, but he also writes about the cost of it to the revenger - I'd always had an interest in that.

Tom Burke

I remember when I had to copy writing off the board at school it just looked to me like a magic eye picture, I could just see so many shapes.

Tom Burke

I think a series risks straying into self-parody if you get into a fourth series... sometimes even if you get into a third, because the audience knows how it's going to go.

Tom Burke

There are absolutely amazing people running regional theatres, and amazing regional companies.

Tom Burke

I felt quite confident - when you come out of drama school you feel like you're on top of everything. I always tell people to go to drama school even if they've already done movies or whatever because the way you encounter content is so different.

Tom Burke

Yet everybody's experience is really interesting. Or, if not their experience, then their unlived life. Or their desire. Their id. Their curiosity.

Tom Burke

I think there's a value in people talking, it's just that we're in this culture now where everyone wants to 'out' each other at every moment, for their unconscious bias or whatever, and people then don't feel free to just talk. Do you know what I mean?

Tom Burke

I remember spending time in Stratford growing up with all that company running round and putting on silly hats and just having fun all the time.

Tom Burke

I think, unlike other superheroes, what one gleans about the Musketeers, certainly from the source material, is that the good that they do happens in quite a spasmodic manner, in short bursts.

Tom Burke

You only have to look at Manchester's Royal Exchange or Home to understand the huge energy outside London - there's enough talent around the country to have a Donmar and National in every city. It just comes down to money.

Tom Burke

When I entered the profession, I didn't make a big deal of it. People didn't really know I was my parents' son.

Tom Burke