Jared Harris Quotations

When you're acting and you need to cry, you want to put yourself in a position where you're trying not to cry, because that is generally what people try and do. They try to hold on to their emotions, they don't want to lose them.

There are many cases where the direction of the play comes from within the cast of actors, especially in terms of the choices in performance.

'Mad Men' is a hard act to follow. Unless you're called Elisabeth Moss, stuff like this only comes along once in your career.

I was stuck in boarding school when I was seven years old and I knew that the only way to get out was to go pass your exams, so I studied.

I was beginning to think I was typecast in everyone's mind out there as a serial killer. I played a serial killer in one movie, I was the ghost of a serial killer in another and in a third, a computer-generated serial killer. The stage looks pretty good after those roles.

I used to do lots of independent films and for a while I was very content living in New York City and doing independent movies and off-Broadway theater. I loved it, I had a really good time doing that, and I worked on a lot of projects that are very dear to my heart, both plays and films.

It used to be that you could do these nuggets of a movie and it would attach itself in terms of credibility to your work and the style of work that you did, that people would be interested and curious about you and your work as an actor.

You can't really do a lot of research for being a mass manipulating, murdering super-villain.

People are fascinated by evil because it's mysterious and it doesn't seem to have a rational behind it.

It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.

I audition for stuff all the time, and what's weird about it is that one's success rate at auditioning doesn't really change. It's sort of at the same ratio of stuff you audition for to things you land.

I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it's one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that's appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you.

Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really.

When you see natural disasters caught on film you realize how well they had been imagined by Hollywood for such a long time. It's all good fun. You never know who's gonna survive and who doesn't.

Normally death scenes are good, if you have a significant death scene and it means something it's like the audience has an attachment to you being killed that's a good thing.

When you're at drama school you spend so much time working on amazing texts and analyzing them, digging into them, and figuring out why it happens, why you are being asked to say what you're saying, and what the words mean. But then when you start working, most of the stuff would just fall apart if you subject it to that kind of scrutiny.

I like challenges. If you're involved, as one is, in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself. You don't want to repeat what you're done before.

If you want to do your version, go off and write it. You bring your knowledge to it, and you can use that to shape it and color it, but it's someone else's version of that character. You're not actually playing the real person.

Very few movies I've done I regret being involved in.

I really wanted to get out of England.

Matt Weiner is an amazing writer. He's one of the best, greatest writers that's ever written for television, or just written.

I remember thinking, 'I'll audition just once and if it doesn't work out I'll never think about it ever again.'

I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they're having a shower. It's fun.

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

Often in films there's more of allowing the actors to make the dialogue fit better in their own. Also, you get to a location and the geography is different, so the lines don't line up the right way, so you do have to change stuff.

I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

I've done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though - come on, it's brilliant. I love a good death scene!

I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.

One of the things that I was interested in about Moriarty was - he's so manipulative that he doesn't need to commit violence himself or kill people - he can get everyone to do what he needs to do. And sometimes they don't even know that they are being manipulated by him.

I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

In the old patrician world there was a custom once a week you had to eat a meal with your slaves and get to know them as people.

I keep mementos from everything I've done.

People are fascinated by evil because its mysterious and it doesnt seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

You get ideas from other people all the time.

If you only take parts that are offered to you, you end up playing the same roles over and over again. I think it's important to keep auditioning. I think it's important to scare yourself; to take parts that are outside of your comfort zone.

I keep mementos from everything I've done. I've got my cab driver's license from 'Happiness.' I've got a pair of glasses and a belt buckle from playing John Lennon. I've got a pair of sunglasses from playing Andy Warhol... It's all in a box in the garage.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.