British Actor Quotations

If you have something that you know is important to you and vital to you... then this will perhaps help people understand the importance of confronting it and being brave about it.

I think the intelligent thing about it is that you have to carefully listen to it all to grasp it, and because I'm not in every scene - colossal disappointment to everybody that it may be - I'm not getting the full picture here today while recording it.

I believed totally in the possibilities implied in the series. I never thought of it as fantasy. Far from it.

I was paid to be cheeky and people clapped me for it.

I just play him as myself, I don't ease myself into any role really. I stick a beard on and play me.

Oh, Mr Coward, sir - I could never have an affair with you, because you remind me of my father!

The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive.

I won't say I wouldn't be grateful and happy and delighted and thrilled to bits to receive a nomination. But I wouldn't be suicidal if it didn't happen.

Also, from a technical point of view, as you're standing in front of a microphone all day, it's quite a good idea that I should play a laid back sort of character because if he was too frenetic, I'd be exhausted by lunch!

Sixty-four thousand dollars for a question, I hope they are asking you the meaning of life.

When I got back I found myself being very emotional about the time spent in Rwanda in a way that I hadn't been able to or allowed myself to be when we were there.

In Scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed.

I was always in plays at school and in school concerts - you could say I liked to show off.

Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.

It's a question of why they come for your advice. Whatever I tell you, it doesn't matter, it is completely irrelevant in a way. I know so many actors who were discouraged and put that aside. You will get half-baked opinions.

In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were.

If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else.

To tell you the truth, it's a complex piece, so I can't really answer your question at present.

As always, there's a couple of things in the pipeline - but that pipeline is a strange and ambiguous place.

I would first recommend we appoint a Police Director that commands the respect of the rank and file.

The reason one writes poems is so that your poem will be remembered.

You come on as a guest. You don't get the girl anymore. But that is our lives. You start off as the boyfriend, then you are the lover, then you are the husband, then you are the father, and then you are the grandfather.

I am the reassurance that they have not changed. In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were.

I once did a role which I couldn't rehearse in my street clothes, I had to have the character's costume on before I could rehearse it. I just couldn't think as the character unless I looked like him, or I knew that I looked like him.

He has all those different aspects to him, so I can more or less decide as a performer how I'm going to deliver a line in a particular scene, or play a particular scene in total.

It seems so long ago that I played the part of the Doctor.

I think for anybody reading the book they're going to get an idea in their heads of all those characters, and I think that once that gets fixed, it's quite hard to shake.

If someone is not happy with one thing we either tweak it until they're happy with it. We all know where that line is, where you have to be three hands up.

The oil sequence was about two or three days. It was very cold and was snowing.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?'

Today's youth cannot miss something they have never known, but I fear that there are no current fictional characters whose impact and influence will last with such abiding affection into their 'sore and yellow' as this splendid man's creations have in mine!

I have no great urge to be minister of this or minister of that, but instead would feel incredible blessed to have the opportunity to be a champion for a constituency and fight for their cause.

People need to be peppered or even outraged occasionally. Our national comedy and drama is packed with earthy familiarity and honest vulgarity. Clean vulgarity can be very shocking and that, in my view, gives greater involvement.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If he is a ghost, then it's very disappointing for me, because he is banished in the story, and that could mean that he won't be coming back, and that would be terrible, wouldn't it?

A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape.

Because I don't really think of myself as a hunk, to be honest.

We have to scrutinize the entire abatement process to ensure the companies that are under consideration for an abatement truly need one, and I don't believe that is being done now.

The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.

It is very difficult for people to come in contact with their own emotions and their own sensibilities.

All good actors are easy to work with. It's the ones that aren't very good who tend to be very difficult.

He's psychologically damaged, I suppose, if you stand back and look objectively at him, but then, who isn't?

If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.

I didn't set out to make this kind of picture. It just came my way. But its been going on for me for 16 years now and its wonderful for an actor to work consistently. There seems to be an insatiable audience for this type of film.

A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he's not alone in the way he feels about himself.

It's no good being great in something that goes straight to video.

What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages.

I do feel we can create more jobs and opportunities for Jersey City residents, but in the spirit of free enterprise, I do not think it is right to force companies to hire a fixed percentage of local residents.

It's about putting the pedal to the metal and not asking any questions at all and just going for it.

I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing.

If I were brave enough to say so, I'd like to think that I had written some poems that people are not going to forget.

Most stuff you can do standing on your head.

I think the main thing was that the character couldn't speak in regular language, so he had to be mimed.

Also, if we take back our schools and concentrate on improving them so our children get a better education, they will be better trained to compete for a job locally.

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

Richard was in heavy, heavy costume, he could hardly sit, you know, and I turned up and they put me in two layers of silk, so I played him much lighter - you know, floating around in a pair of slippers, a bit of a hippy.

Once Miramax gets involved, if they like your movie, there's a big machine that gets involved.

Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.

We were diving in caves. It wasn't totally safe.

I did manage to secure a feature film for 2005, though, which I'm really chuffed about.

One of the characteristics of plays that are made into films is that they can be very talky.

They asked if I was interested in a role as a large alien in a movie.

No, I'm not a lager lout either. I think you have to be a massive football fan to be a lager lout.

Bring back dueling, I say. Drive-by sword fight.

I don't think the process was successful and should be inspected closer. I am not afraid to say I am not familiar with the entire process, so before commenting further I would have to study the process more in depth.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

I don't honestly know why they offered me the part in Rent.

When you're an actor you don't really know what you have to do until you see what you look like.

These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.

This has been the best thing that ever happened to me.

If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.

She is up there with the best of them. I can only talk about my experience, but it was genuinely special.

Since an early age I was taught to be very politically aware and knew from childhood that the process was something I wanted to contribute towards if I could.

I would recommend it to everybody, every now and again you just put a dress on, see what it feels like, because it's, its interesting. A whole complex series of thoughts and feelings assail you as you look at yourself.

There just seems to be more acceptance now of... other kinds of British films, than the picture-postcard ones.

There are so many things that poetry is about, one of which is memory.

He tells you stories, but then, after a while, when you want more, he doesn't give you more. He insists on this old elaboration, the old stories that never changes.

There's only one shot you have at a movie, and that's your best shot. If you can't give it that, don't go. They're paying you! You gotta do a job for them.

I realised that the only time I really enjoyed music was when I was in the studio writing. So even though it was a six album deal, they saw quite early on that I wasn't enjoying it as I should be. I didn't feel there was anything behind it.

And there are a lot more people reading poetry, but there are not so many people reading an individual poet.

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could.

When you consider that you're a character that doesn't speak, but you've still got to react to the other actors, you've got to make a noise of some kind.

I think people forget that to be on the A list you first had to go through the original graded Parliamentary Selection Board. I did that and then like everyone else had the further interviews to get onto the A list.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

I think that I'm busy in the present, and I don't want to go back. Well, there's been an unauthorized biography, and you can't stop them. It didn't worry me.

You don't have any kind of sense of being foolish when you are acting. When you're younger you don't want to look a fool, so you don't do things that might make you vulnerable.

But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.

She goes on the set with headphones and gives you notes. She's terrific and I always run to her now, because she is just great to work with, as well as very good at different accents.

They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.

I think the things I wanted answered have been answered by people in the know that we can't talk about, so I'm perfectly happy with how Chewie came to be where he is and what is going on in Episode III.

I've never had a chance to sit down and enjoy what's happened - I've been too panicked about the next move. So I took some time out. I thought either I do this now or in 10 years' time I'll end up in the Priory.

I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant.

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

In my youth, I found that I was quite often inspired and pushed forward by what I read.

Specifically, we talked about making the character of the prince not so charming, at least in the beginning, and I'm playing around with the preconceptions attached to a character. That's really what intrigued me as well because I thought it would be fun to do it.

I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine.

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

In the case of Elektra I really wasn't sure I could pull it off. There were so many intellectual leaps. My character, Stick, is blind, but he can see better than most people. So I had trouble kind of finding the logic.