William Hartnell
It may seem like hindsight now, but I just knew that 'Doctor Who' was going to be an enormous success. Don't ask me how. Not everybody thought as I did. I was universally scoffed at for my initial faith in the series, but I believed in it.Collection: Faith
I haven't the slightest wish to get in a rocket and zoom through the stratosphere.
But I'm not, I'm legitimate, I'm a legitimate character actor of the theatre and film.
Children of five and upwards write asking if it's my own hair, whether I'm married, how old I am, what's inside a Dalek and how Tardis works. Nearly all of them send me drawings of Daleks and incidents from stories.
I got a real kick when a series was set in the court of Kublai Khan or in Nero's Rome.
Somebody else can be the first man on the moon. It doesn't interest me at all.
We did 'Doctor Who' for forty-eight weeks a year but I loved it.
I saw the Doctor as a kind of lama, one of those long-lived old boys out in Tibet who might be anything up to eight hundred years old but only look seventy-five.
My agent said the part was that of an eccentric old grandfather-come-professor type who travels in space and time. Well, I wasn't that keen, but I agreed to meet the producer. Then, the moment this brilliant young producer, Verity Lambert, started telling me about 'Doctor Who,' l was hooked.
To me, kids are the greatest audience and the greatest critics in the world.
I couldn't go out into the streets without a bunch of kids following me. I felt like the Pied Piper. Everyone calls me 'Doctor Who' and I feel like I actually am him.
I'm not brassed off, it's just it's the association of the Dalek question, this mechanical mobile object, I'm beginning to find it distracting. And they were difficult to play to, because you're not looking into human eyes. You're looking at a metal object, moving about, with a voiceover.
I was so pleased to be offered 'Doctor Who.'
If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cries of strange birds, and watch them wheel in another sky, would that satisfy you?Collection: Sky
The moment this brilliant young producer Miss Verity Lambert started telling me about Doctor Who, I was hooked. I remember telling her, This is going to run for five years. And look what's happened!Collection: Running