That's all for today
We’re out of time. Thanks for all your questions!
Jamie Lemon asks:
In The City and the City, do you think there is any deep metaphor for what it is like to live in the modern European city?
Guardian contributor In The City and The City my character can not see or hear anybody from the other city which is sometimes right next to him. I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to see that in our everyday lives. We walk passed people all the time who are in terrible circumstances compared to our own. Sometimes we don't hear people in distress, closing our ears to things right next to us and China Mieville has taken those circumstances and pushed them in creating the worlds of Beszel and Ul Qoman. So, yes, I do think it has resonance with the way we live today.
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MardyBex asks:
Any chance you’ll be returning as Thorne?
Guardian contributor Not at the moment. But I did love doing that job, which I also produced. Mark Billingham the writer of the books is a good mate, and we've often talking about redoing it. So who knows. I hope so because it is a character I feel there are more stories to tell about.
Was Holding On the turning point in your career?
whitewall66 asks:
Was Holding On the turning point in your career? I don’t think it’s ever been repeated – I thought it was excellent.
Guardian contributor I wouldn't say it was a turning point but it was the job that I met the writer Tony Marchant who became a great friend and I later directed his piece Passerby with Jimmy Nesbitt. That was one of the first directing jobs I had and that started me on a career behind the camera as well as in front of it. It had a great influence on me in that way. I wish they would repeat it. It was a fantastic piece of work and some of the best writing on television.
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Drust asks:
Brecht urged actors to adopt a ‘gestic stance’ in order to help define the emotion within a character and the context. Are you a practitioner of his theory or do you just wing it?
Guardian contributor I don't just wing it. I work from the inside out. I work from emotions and my relationships to other characters. The hopes and fears of my character. I'm not an actor who works from the outside in, getting the shoes right or the stance right or external things, although I know great actors who do do this.
randomradastudent asks:
What felt more life-changing; moving from Liverpool to London to attend Rada as a working-class actor or moving from London to America to become a film star?
Guardian contributor Definitely moving from Liverpool to London. It felt so alien to me. I remember asking someone on the street for directions and they looked at me like I was dirt. That would never happen in Liverpool. I was used to being in a city where you sat on a bus, next to a total stranger and would end up talking for the entire journey like you'd known each other for ages. So I found London a very unfriendly place at first. But once I found my way around and got to meet some 'real Londoners' I made it my home and it has been that ever since.
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Matt08 asks:
One Summer resonated with a lot of my generation, everyone watched it and talked about it school the next day. Can you remember anything about it? Did you know you were working on something pretty groundbreaking?
Guardian contributor Yes, I have great great memories of One Summer and Spencer Leigh and Ian Hart still remain great friends of mine. It was the show that made me fall in love with acting and the whole process of film making. I have great affection for it. Someone recently sent me the soundtrack on vinyl, and it brought back so many great memories. It's also where I met the great James Hazeldine who was not only my great friend but my mentor for many years, sadly no longer with us. He was one of the biggest influences on my life.
Catchytitled asks:
Mo Salah or Ian Rush in his prime?
Guardian contributor IT would have to be Rush, at the moment. I love Mo Salah and I think Liverpool have such an exciting team at the moment and a bright future, but they need to start winning stuff. No one can argue with Rushy's trophy cabinet. Here's hoping that Mo and the team can start bringing trophies to Anfield soon.
'I really can't wait to get back to DJing'
CathyWx asks:
I love it when you DJ! Did you ever do it when you were younger?
Guardian contributor I didn't DJ when I was younger but I was king of the mixtape. That was my gift of choice. Instead of buying somebody flowers, chocolates etc, they'd get a C-60 (or a C-90 if I really liked them) cassette full of my favourite tunes. Having the chance to play tunes on a radio station and communicate with people has been a dream come true. I really can't wait to get back to it when I have some time off. Thanks for listening!
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G A Johnson asks:
I admire your work with refugees. What first inspired you to work with them and do you see yourself continuing to do that for a long time?
Guardian contributor I am a goodwill ambassador here in the UK for UNHCR. I have been doing work with them to highlight the plight of refugees for a number of years now and I will continue to do that for as long as I can. I feel that the refugee crisis and how we handle it is truly the challenge of our age. Reaching out to people, helping people who are fleeing murderous circumstances is a no brainer to me. We've seen in history what happens to people when the world turns its back on them and it's up to us in the 21st century to ensure that that doesn't happen again.
RhondaKaySimpson asks:
Besides reading the novel, what kind of research did you do for The City and the City’s Inspector Tyador Borlú?
Guardian contributor One of the things I researched for The City and The City was what it was like for people living under oppressive regimes. How people can be controlled by subtle restrictions of their civil liberties, how the spread of paranoia can control people and how the fear of speaking out is crippling to any society.
Lisa1968 asks:
Hi David! What were your favourite filming locations in Liverpool and Manchester for The City and the City? I know it was special for you being in your hometown.
Guardian contributor One location on The City and They City was inside the Mersey tunnel. Although it was pretty grubby down there I never thought as a child when I drove to Wales through the Mersey tunnel that one day I would be filming a major TV series in that very place.
wingers1966 asks:
How was your experience of playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre? How did your characterisation of Antony come about?
Guardian contributor It was a wonderful experience all round. Great cast, great crew and brilliant audiences. I think The Bridge is a very special theatre and I will remember the experience for a very long time. What is amazing about Shakespeare is how even now he is relevant to us and can give us insight into human behaviour that illuminates the very situations and times we are living in now.
eoffwode asks:
Do you regret Basic Instinct 2?
Guardian contributor No. Absolutely not. I made great friends on it. I thought it was a great script. I know it didn't turn out to be the greatest film in the world but I've never regretted any job I've gone into. You learn from all your work but the knocks that you take whether it be from journalist, reviews etc all serve to make you stronger.
midwintersnow asks:
What advice would you give to a young person now without any means or support but who is really burning to go into acting?
Guardian contributor I am very worried about the lack of support for people from low-income backgrounds trying to get into the creative arts. It's always been a difficult profession to break into but I feel now with drama and the visual arts being taken out of school curriculum it's even harder. My advice is never give up. Join amateur dramatic groups. Get your friends together to read plays and scripts, make your own film on your phone, it's about knocking on doors writing letters and believing in yourself.
'I would love to play The Governor again'
Rtho87 asks:
I loved your portrayal of The Governor in The Walking Dead. Is there any chance that you’ll ever play the role again? An adaption of the Rise of the Governor novel would make a wonderful prequel!
Guardian contributor I would love to play the role again, however there are no plans to do it. Not to my knowledge anyway. He was a character that I felt had great depth and complexity. Not just a cardboard baddy. A lot of my inspiration for the role came from the books written by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga. I think these books are fantastic and I think it would be wonderful to do a mini series of them.
tuityfruity asks:
What are you planning to do next and how do you choose such good stuff? Or are you never asked to do dross?
Guardian contributor I start shooting the second season of Britannia tomorrow. We have most of the original cast and some new brilliant actors are joining us. What I tend to do is try and choose things I haven't done before. Things that will challenge me. I do get bored easily!
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FuzzyDunlop1982 asks:
Blimey, how good was State of Play, eh?! What do you think of the movie remake?!
Guardian contributor I didn't watch the remake. I always felt it would have been like going to the wedding of a girlfriend you were still in love with. You wish her all the best but when the question came around 'if anyone objected to the marriage' I couldn't trust myself to stand up and say 'it should have been me'.
Su_tonightwefly7 asks:
I thought you were amazing in Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. What did you enjoy most about working together on stage with Ben Whishaw? Any anecdotes you can share?
Guardian contributor One of the reasons I took the job was to work with Ben Whishaw again. We'd done the film Stoned together and the BBC adaptation of Richard II. I think he's one of our finest actors. One thing that happened during the show was that when they killed Caesar one night Ben got covered in blood all over his face and it was running into his eyes. I didn't know whether to help him or burst out laughing.
How will Brexit affect you as an actor and producer?
LeaFrostfromGermany asks:
Your recent TV projects were European co-productions, involving international cast and filming locations. How will Brexit affect you as an actor and producer?
Guardian contributor The short answer is I don't know, but I would hope that there would be some sort of trade agreement so that productions like The Missing, Britannia and The City and The City could happen using all the great talent across Europe.
RhondaKaySimpson asks:
If you could have bring any film you have done to the stage, which one would it be?
Guardian contributor Blackpool. It was a musical TV show with the characters bursting into song every now and then. It was really fun to do and I think it could easily be translated to a really great Westend show, although I'd need to work on my singing and dancing.
RiaHenderson asks:
Which one of your characters can you relate to the most / who’s most like your personality in real life?!
Guardian contributor There's always different aspects of myself in all my characters but the character that was most like me was Billy in One Summer, which was the first job I ever did about a 16 year old kid in Liverpool, which I happened to be at the time. It was a very relatable to me at the time.
RhondaKaySimpson asks:
How did you get ready for the swimming in Britannia. It looked very cold to be swimming …
Guardian contributor It was freezing. I had a wetsuit on my bottoms but nothing on my top but the wetsuit meant I kept floating up to the top of the water so I had to take it off. My biggest problem was that I was in the scene with Aaron Pierre who is built like a man mountain so I kept dipping under the water so I didn't look too puny next to him.
carllalala asks:
Having heard you talking about music, I reckon your fave Beatles album is probably Let It Be. But John or Paul?
Guardian contributor My favourite Beatles album is not Let It Be although I love it. It's Revolver. I couldn't choose between John and Paul, because I feel the forces of all four of them is what made the Beatles great and the Beatles couldn't have happened without them.
David Morrissey has arrived!
And is here to answers your questions…
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David Morrissey webchat – post your questions now
Stage, small screen and big screen: over the course of his career, David Morrissey has done them all and made himself one of the UK’s most respected character actors in the process.
A working-class Liverpudlian, when he told his parents about his chosen career path it didn’t go down too well. “It was like telling them I wanted to be an astronaut,” he told the Guardian in 2015. “Not because it was highfalutin’, but because it was a world they didn’t know. They were worried about the unknown.”
Starting out at the Everyman theatre in his home city, Morrissey studied at Rada before a breakthrough role in Anand Tucker’s Hilary and Jackie, followed by one as Captain Weber in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in 2001. But, arguably, it’s his small-screen roles that have defined his career. His turn as a compromised politician in Paul Abbott’s State of Play astonished, as did his portrayal of Gordon Brown in The Deal, while his more recent stint as the Governor on The Walking Dead made him a global star.
He is currently starring in the BBC’s sci-fi crime thriller The City and the City, a four-part adaptation of China Miéville’s award-winning novel, which is available in full on iPlayer. Morrissey plays Inspector Tyador Borlú, who is caught between two parallel worlds.
David will be joining us for a live webchat at 1.15pm GMT on Friday 20 April. Post your questions about his career in the comments section below.
Yes. Sadly I was not there I was at home watching it on the telly with my son who was six at the time. At half time I turned to him and said it's over, this could be seven of eight nil, and he said to me 'no dad, we'll win this'. I thought he was totally delusional but of course now I think he's a genius. And he's a diehard Red like his dad.