KIERAN BEW

I always love being an actor for the simple fact that, whenever you do a job, you have to read a lot of stuff that you've never read before; you explore things, and generally you meet experts in lots of fields, and you get to absorb that information and make it look like you've done it for 20 years.

I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid. I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched 'Robin Hood,' 'Star Wars,' 'Highlander' and 'The Three Musketeers,' and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.

A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero.

At drama school, I got a job choreographing and teaching the fights for Mark Rylance doing 'Hamlet' at the Globe in London when I was only 19. They made me fight captain.

You can't go around saying you're the best, all the time, 'cause it puts a target on your back.

I come from the theater and you normally have four or five weeks to prepare. For me, the fun of the job is to pull yourself into a subject that you know nothing about.

I've been trained by a two-time world champion kickboxer, who's local to where I come from, and who is really just there to keep me fit and healthy while I'm shooting.

The marriage between the fantasy and the Westerns is that thing of, if people think you're the best gunslinger around, they're going to come looking for you.

There's a great freedom you get when you're making TV that you don't get when you're doing film.

I want to know everything. I'm probably a bit of a pest for the producers because I ask a lot of questions.

You've got something really angsty for me to play? Bring it on. Most of the time, I'm goofing around and doing impressions of people, so that's nice.

I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid. I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched 'Robin Hood,' 'Star Wars,' 'Highlander' and 'The Three Musketeers,' and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.

At drama school, I got a job choreographing and teaching the fights for Mark Rylance doing 'Hamlet' at the Globe in London when I was only 19. They made me fight captain.

I always love being an actor for the simple fact that, whenever you do a job, you have to read a lot of stuff that you've never read before; you explore things, and generally you meet experts in lots of fields, and you get to absorb that information and make it look like you've done it for 20 years.

Beowulf is not a superhero. He has a talent, very much like Clint Eastwood in 'Unforgiven.' He's very good at staying calm in the right moment, but he does bad things. It's very much about having talent in a tight spot.

You can't go around saying you're the best, all the time, 'cause it puts a target on your back.

I come from the theater and you normally have four or five weeks to prepare. For me, the fun of the job is to pull yourself into a subject that you know nothing about.

There's a great freedom you get when you're making TV that you don't get when you're doing film.

I like to know what the gestation of the idea is, I like to know the foundation, and I do a lot of reading and research.

I want to know everything. I'm probably a bit of a pest for the producers because I ask a lot of questions.

When you read the poem, you wonder, what might Grendel have been? Could it have been a person that was turned away? Someone that was disfigured or deformed? Like everything else did, it came from somewhere. It's really exciting, and not knowing is part of the magic and mystery.

I've been trained by a two-time world champion kickboxer, who's local to where I come from, and who is really just there to keep me fit and healthy while I'm shooting.

A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero.

The marriage between the fantasy and the Westerns is that thing of, if people think you're the best gunslinger around, they're going to come looking for you.