Playboy: Within a short period of time you have progressed from being an English radio comedian to international star status. Do you regard yourself as a star?
Sellers: No, I’m not a star. I’m a character actor. The character actor must tailor his talent to the parts that are offered. If I were a leading man, a tall, good-looking sort of chap, you know, a chap who has a way with him, who gets parts tailored for his personality, like Cary Grant, then I could regard myself as a star. I’m not a star, because I have no personality of my own.
Playboy: Hasn’t success enabled you to find your personality?
Sellers: Success hasn’t enabled me to find out anything about myself. I just know I can do certain things. If you go too deep into yourself, if you analyze yourself too closely, it’s no good for the job. You can either act or you can’t. If you analyze your own emotions all the time, and every doorknob you handle, you know, you’re up the spout.
Playboy: But supposing you were asked to play a character called Peter Sellers, how would you play him?
Sellers: What I would do, I’d go to see all my friends, I’d go to see my acquaintances, and ask them how they see me, ask for their impressions of Peter Sellers. And then I would sift these characterizations. That’s all I can do, because I am quite unaware of what I am. A politician can see himself, can see what sort of an impact he is making. I can’t. I know I’m a bad conversationalist. Often I’m at parties, and people think Peter Sellers is going to do an act, and they wait, and when nothing is forthcoming, they’re disappointed.
Playboy: Don’t you see a concrete personality when you look in the mirror?
Sellers: It’s difficult but — er — I suppose what I’d see is someone who has never grown up, a wild sentimentalist, capable of great heights and black, black depths — a person who has no real voice of his own. I’m like a mike. I have no set sound of my own. I pick it up from my surroundings. At the moment I’ve got a South African architect working on my new flat in Hampstead, and so I tend to speak in a South African accent all the time. As for the face in the mirror, well — my appearance is fattish, a more refined-looking Pierre Laval, sometimes happy, but always trying to achieve a peace of mind that doesn’t seem possible in this business. This business breeds a tension that is difficult to live with.