Brendan Coyle — British Actor born on December 02, 1963,

Brendan Coyle is an English actor. He won the Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for The Weir in 1999. He also played Nicholas Higgins in the miniseries North & South, Robert Timmins in the first three series of Lark Rise to Candleford, and more recently Mr Bates, the valet, in Downton Abbey. The last role earned him a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor... (wikipedia)

I would have loved to have been a footballer like my great uncle Matt Busby, but I knew quite early on that I wasn't going to make the grade. Luckily I was told by the age of 13 that I wasn't good enough. That's not a bad thing. You see this 'X Factor' generation of kids now who don't accept that they're not good enough.
Am I a household name? I still can't get my head around that.
I think with Sky and BBC Three and Channel 4, there are some great television platforms, and the stand-up movement in this country is phenomenal. It's like rock n' roll here. Britain's a funny place and there's a lot of funny people coming out of there and a lot of people are finding mediums to express themselves.
You can't be a casual observer of something humorous - you have to engage, you have to find it funny for the relationship between actor and audience to work.
I had to escape the destruction of my father's bankruptcy and all that difficulty.