Mark Gatiss

I always wanted to do Restoration comedy. It seems like so much fun.

Fear is an underrated emotion. And that's why I think it's very dangerous to try and cosset children from it. A healthy scare is as good as as a healthy laugh. In fact, they're two sides of the same coin. There is a desire to shield from the knocks and bumps of reality.

One of the pleasures of the original 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' is how incredibly ghastly they are. The ugly sisters have their eyes pecked out by crows.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks - who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

It's a cliche, but it's true that all the fun lies in baddies, grotesques and comic roles.

Sci-fi and fantasy used to be a TV staple throughout my childhood. Then it just stopped dead. It was seen as culty, a minority interest.

Son of Frankenstein' is never talked about in the same tone as James Whale's 1931 'Frankenstein.' But it should be. It was Boris Karloff's last appearance in the Frankenstein series and stars Donnie Dunagan, then a child actor.

I'm a great believer in the beauty and the power of surprise.

The reason I wanted to do 'The First Men in the Moon' was that there is something so challenging in the combination of space travel and the Edwardian period.

Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it's a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I had it.

I'm an actor and a writer, that's how I think of myself. Sometimes my time is divided equally, sometimes less equally, but that's what I do.