Alfred Molina Quotations

And I think it's because good cons are all based on the victim's need, and the successful con artist is the one, I guess, who can exploit that. I remember reading something about this, that one of the great traits of confidence tricksters is the level that they flatter their victim.

When I look back on my career - if that's what it is - it looks a bit like a crazy quilt, and I think it's just really because, when one job has finished, I've never really been in a position where I had three or four options.

Even at drama school if there was a part of some eastern European thug it would be me.

Every job is different. I don't think that I've ever had that wonderful feeling when you've finished a job or where you feel like you've mastered it or sort of nailed it... You can never be satisfied. If you're satisfied, it's time to retire.

Music is an essential part of my life and I'm completely lost without a good album to listen to or my iPod in my pocket!

I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life.

There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.

The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.

When I get home after being away for work, my wife always stuffs the fridge with loads of what she calls 'nibbles' - all the great things you can eat straight from the fridge, like chunks of cheese, slices of ham, bowls of hummus.

My wife and I use a lot of garlic and rosemary with roast lamb. It has to be New Zealand lamb. The domestic variety is too gamy, in my experience.

To be challenged means to strive. I'm almost certain that's true.

My father was a waiter basically, and when I got my first professional job as an actor, I left a job that he found me for half the amount of money. So anyone would think that they're stupid, that that would be a stupid move.

I'm not qualified to do anything else. So there better be another job. I'm kind of stuck now. I'm enjoying my life and I'm enjoying my work, and I'm enjoying the fact that the work I'm doing is garnering some interest and that's great. I just hope that it continues.

The worst thing that an actor can do is go into any project with a lack of respect for the material. You can have an opinion about it, but you have to respect yourself in doing it.

Character actors aren't a brand in the same way that high-profile leading men are.

I do remember being a fan of the Marvel characters and not liking the DC characters at all.

I love working fast. I don't relish the director who wants to do 25 to 30 takes, or the actors who insist on doing 25 or 30 takes.

I've been acting for 25 years, living out of suitcases on theater tours or film locations.

I think it would be a problem if Hollywood was casting British actors only as villains; if that were the case, then certainly there would be cause for concern.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

I've always been terrified about being bored. I always think being bored is the worst thing. The only strategic decision I ever made as an actor was to try and make each job as different as possible.

I've worked with actors who treat the first two takes like rehearsals. And that's okay. If the camera is on you and we're doing a scene where I'm off camera, I'm treating that as a rehearsal.

Screen work always boils down to that moment between the camera and the actor or the actors. It always boils down to that, ultimately. You serve the camera.

When I was younger I was always big; I was a fat boy at school. I had an early growth spurt, and when I went to secondary school I was tall enough to be a policeman.

You're suspended sixty feet up in the air, you've been up there for three hours, and all the shot requires is that you have to sort of react to getting punched in the head.

There are only two people, out of all the actors that I've worked with, who I can say I'm really close friends with. I have lots of acquaintances, but only two of them are real friends. You're just part of the group he has to shake hands with. It's part of the myth that we're all phoning each other and sharing deep secrets, private things.

I'm a quite gregarious person. I'm not out clubbing every night or anything like that, but I socialize. I have a nice group of friends.

Yeah, when you're kind of my size and look the way I do, leading man romantic leads aren't going to come your way.

I never made conscious choices. There were times in my life that I chose the first job that came along because I was broke. I think that there were maybe a handful of times that I had a choice. In recent years, Ive had more of a choice, and its been very nice to have that choice, but most of the time, you just hope that theres another job after this one.

If anything, as a general rule, the cheaper the movie the more creative the experience, generally speaking. Its not to denigrate expensive movies. I dont want to seem biting the hands that feed me, but with big movies, especially with a lot of effects, the role of the actor is somewhat diminished.

I love playing villains.

There's a whole army of people looking after you to make sure that you're not in any kind of danger. I mean, even when you're up swinging off a wire, there's people there checking everything. Everything is double checked and triple checked before you go anywhere near it. I'm not one of those actors who gets any pleasure out of doing their own stunts.

They begin to fire together. The more they fire together, the more they wire together.

I love the sound of my own voice, and there's no one else there to give you notes. It's great. When I'm on my own, I think that I'm Lawrence Olivier. It's when I'm working with other people that I realize how bad I am.

I don't think that there's such a thing as a career. I think that career is a myth. A career isn't what you have ahead of you. A career is what you've got behind you. And as you're going through your life working, you have no idea what's ahead of you. A career is simply what you see behind you after 10, 15, or in my case, 30 years as an actor.