The actor, 53, on Glasgow, crime and winning an Oscar
It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn't miserable and it wasn't poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights. I grew up in Springlands, where they made locomotives, and you could always hear industrial sounds, though they're gone now ? there's no more industry.
Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.
I'm not terribly well read. My wife forces books into my hands and insists I read them, which I'm grateful to her for. She made me read War and Peace. The whole thing. It was amazing, but I had to hide it. You can't walk round reading War and Peace ? it's like you're in a comedy sketch and you think you're smart.
I went to art school in the days when it was what you did if you didn't want to be like everybody else. You wanted to be strange and different and art school encouraged that. We hated the drama students ? they were guys with pipes and cardigans. We took acid and painted murals.
I haven't met one person who hasn't been kind about Malcolm Tucker [in The Thick of It]. People come up and say they love me and ask me to swear at them. They just want me to tell them to fuck off, they're happy with that.
Drawing is the only thing I've found in which I can lose myself completely. I love it. It started as something that relaxed me, but now it's a struggle because I'm pushing myself. The day-to-day sketching is fraught.
I'm fascinated by fire. When I was four I wore an American fireman's hat all the time and I still have one in my office today. Glasgow used to be called Tinderbox City; there were always fires, people getting killed. There's a photo of me and my daughter in New York next to a fire engine ? oblivious to the fact that it was on call at the time, dealing with some catastrophe.
Winning an Oscar [for best short film] was an odd thing that happened to me when I was young. I'm still tempted by the thought of Hollywood, but everyone just wants you to sign up for seven years to a comedy show.
I absolutely hate mowing the lawn. When I hear the mowers starting I want to kill myself, it's the sound of death approaching. Hoovering's OK, but I never in my life wanted to have a lawn and certainly never wanted to mow one.
I've been obsessed with death since I was born. I see signs of death in everything. Mowing the lawn is one of them. I'm 53 now, so with your parents, peer group, you're surrounded by death. Oddly it makes you feel more alive.
The best advice is to get on with it. I'm very prone to falling into depressions ? not clinical, just "can't be bothered". It's such a waste of time.
I'm pleased to still be here. I was lucky not to have gone to drama school. I had no idea about process or career so I took what I could get. I did many terrible things, but stumbled occasionally into things that were good.
Peter Capaldi stars in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher on ITV1 on 25 April
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/24/peter-capaldi-this-much-i-know
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