- I wasn't interested in novelty. I was looking for good drama.
- To want to be an actor, especially these days, is to be ill.
- I am a one success man.
- I think quite often a fate worse than death is life, for lots of people.
- The Old Testament is my favourite science fantasy reading.
- I'm very interested in nostalgia because that's pretty well all that's left for me.
- I'm a sort of Buddhist, like all actors are, you know, that nonsense about not bathing in the same river twice - you're not even the same person bathing in the same river. So actors, it seems to me, I don't know much about them, I avoid them like the plague, especially the ones at my age, but inevitably I do meet them and they do seem to me to be a bit like me in that they are not really certain who they are.
- I recently got a copy of the Tom Baker Friendship Group's Fan Letter. It said owing to diminishing interest the price of this fan letter is going up from 30 to 58 pence.
- [on The Magic Roundabout (2005)] I haven't seen a script but I've accepted everything, simply because the money was excellent.
- The biggest cause of death in Maidstone is boredom.
- I learned nothing at drama school. The tutors were all far too old and out of date. Not their fault. I'm now extremely old and very dated.
- [on the Doctor Who (1963) serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang: Part One (1977)] The BBC is very good at period drama but not very good at giant rats.
- I think I'm made for the role of Donald MacDonald (Monarch of the Glen (2000)). He's quite clearly from another planet.
- I enjoy overacting and I'm very good at it. I suppose you could say I've made a career out of it.
- As you get near death, as I am, you have to laugh at everything. Otherwise the alternative is to be utterly depressed.
- I've never had a problem with the fame thing, but as I get older I feel I am starting to look less and less like Tom Baker. People used to mistake me for Shirley Williams, but now they just seem to mistake me for my Great Auntie Molly.
- I don't watch television. I know better than that.
- [on David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor] I did watch a little bit of the new Doctor Who (2005) and I think the new fella, Tennant, is excellent.
- [on leaving Doctor Who (1963)] I began to realize that I was not much fun to work with from the point of view of the producer because I got very, very opinionated. I thought that I knew what worked. It meant that I was quite difficult to deal with. And so when I offered my resignation I was quite astounded at how swiftly it was accepted.
- Doctor Who (1963) is watched at several levels in an average household. The smallest child terrified behind a sofa or under a cushion, and the next one up laughing at him, and the elder one saying 'sh, I want to listen', and the parents saying 'isn't this enjoyable'.
- I began to get into the part and then the part began to get into me... I was the Doctor and the Doctor was me... for more than six years I left myself and floated about as a hero.
- Dickens (Charles Dickens) is full of all that theatricality from simple times when people could be heroic, ridiculous and strike attitude. And, of course, all that pretentiousness and snobbery is right up my street. I was born to play Mr Crummles. Even when I played Macbeth, someone said to me that I would make a great Crummles.
- [on winning a poll in the Radio Times as the best star of Doctor Who (1963)] The readers' vote is very pleasing and reassuring. I was lucky because all my stuff was in colour, the scripts were coming along, the effects were getting more refined, the sets didn't fall over so often.
- [on the sexual portrayal of the Doctor in the revived series, Doctor Who (2005)] It was inconceivable during our time. We didn't think like that. I played him entirely... I never did handle the girls. Or if I did handle the girls, I always did it clumsily, because I reasoned that the Doctor wouldn't know about that.
- [on returning to the part of the Doctor] I don't know what it will be like and they haven't approached me yet and I'd want to have some say about the script. I'm not asking for Tom Stoppard to write the script but for it to be as I remember it and as the others remember their time.
- [in 2009] I think it is quite difficult now to surprise an audience with special effects, you may please an audience, but visually you can't actually amaze an audience can you? In a sense you just watch them trying, but if people can appear and disappear and walk through walls and disappear and then carry on fencing or kissing girls, that amazes me.
- 30-odd years later people say, 'What did it feel like when you left Doctor Who (1963)?' I never did leave Doctor Who (1963) because it never left me.
- Frank Bough said to me once, 'Don't you think, actually, your programme frightens people?' I said, 'Not nearly as much as your programme does.'
- Jon Pertwee put a big stamp on Doctor Who (1963). He found a style that was really wonderful.
- The whole of television seemed to be staffed entirely by producers, directors and script editors and people like that were all actors, because where did the original people come from? At that time, you see, when television got going, the only people that knew anything about theatricality and plays were actors. So lots of the producers had been actors in their day.
- [on The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982)] I was not good in it. The BBC apologised for my performance. They didn't like it at all.
- [on the death of Barry Letts] He was the big link in changing my entire life really because it was he who decided to cast me in Doctor Who (1963). It was left down to Barry Letts deciding to employ me or not. He was very anxious at the time because replacing Jon Pertwee was considered a big hurdle. He filled me with great confidence. He was a good man, you know, a really good man. He was a gentleman, you know, that old fashioned gentleman, so kind, so kind. There's no substitute for kindness is there really?
- [on David Walliams and Matt Lucas] I've been with them a long time so we're effortlessly friendly. I am very fond of those boys, they're very young, so I feel rather paternal towards them. I'm also full of admiration for what they do and I'm devoted to their bad taste.
- I would rather be in Little Britain (2003) than King Lear, because there are more laughs.
- [on Doctor Who (2005)] I get sweet messages from time to time from David Tennant, yes, but I've never actually seen it, no. Of course, I didn't watch it when I was in it. Well, once, from behind the sofa.
- [on working with the robot dog K9 in Doctor Who (1963)] That's why I've got bad knees now, what with being a monk in my youth, praying to God, and then on my knees in front of bloody K9.
- The monsters on Doctor Who were never so amazing as the monsters on the sixth floor of the BBC. There were some improbable looking people there.
- I turned down The Five Doctors [The Five Doctors (1983)] because it wasn't long since I'd left - I had left Doctor Who because I think I'd run my course. I didn't want to play 20% of the part. I didn't fancy being a feed for other Doctors - in fact, it filled me with horror.
- [on Potato (1986)] I keep getting money because they repeat my appalling Blackadder performance. Did you ever see me as the legless sea captain? For which someone should have taken away my Equity card. It was terrible and the buggers keep playing it.
- Jon [Jon Pertwee] found it physically impossible to buy a drink. He liked the idea of big sums of money for voice-overs, so I would say in Jon's earshot that someone had offered me £15,000 for a voiceover, but I turned it down because it was going to take a whole hour. This wasn't true, but I could hear Jon's heart pounding. In fact, he died of a heart attack shortly after that. I think that's why.
- Graham Williams was absolutely devoted, but he didn't have that kind of flair that Philip [Philip Hinchcliffe] had. But he let me get away with murder, so that was alright!
- John Nathan-Turner and I did not see eye-to-eye really about very much. It was only afterwards when he'd gone that I got to realise what he was doing for Doctor Who - he was promoting it all over the world, which was all to my advantage. We became quite good friends as time passed - we forgot all about those disagreements.
- [on finding The Stones of Blood: Part Four (1978) tedious] What is amazing about this, of course, this is the longest episode in the history of Doctor Who.
- Now my hair is white, the other day someone mistook me in the street for Claire Rayner. I signed it "Yours sincerely, Claire Rayner." The woman was asking me all sorts of complicated questions about cystitis and things like that.
- It was more fun being Doctor Who (1963) than Tom Baker. Tom Baker was just ordinary.
- I should never have been an actor really for the simple reason I actually don't like being told what to do. I really don't. Now this is a very bad start for an actor. It really is a very bad start.
- No one has ever failed as Doctor Who, no one has ever failed. Remotely. Even the boy who did the film, I've forgotten what his name was.
- I've never worked with anybody twice. Mostly because they've died shortly after working with me.
- [on his marriage to Lalla Ward] We were deliriously happy for weeks.
- Not long ago, I was walking in Oxford Street and a man stopped me: He said, '-Tom Baker??', and I said, 'Yeah.' And he said, 'Tom Baker, Christ...' As he looked at me, I could see him being catapulted back somewhere. And he said, 'When I was a kid, I was in a home in North Wales and, uh, it wasn't very good. They didn't like us, and nobody wanted us. And you made Saturday night good for us, you know?' ...Now, to make a little speech to an old man in Oxford Street thirty-odd years later showed the power, didn't it? Of a benevolent character on children's television.
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