Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Chaos can be incredibly creative.
But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.
Every great filmmaker at some moment makes a war film.
I think I find it easier to live on the stage than in life.
You try, as an actor, to wear a mask; you're serving a story.
I like to connect with the other actors in a fantasy situation.
As a leader, you get a pat on the back when you make a hard choice.
You know, I don't think you need to be educated to be a great actor.
I know that some people who move into film lose their nerve for the stage.
It's an important thing for children to be able to make up their own words.
The publicity machine for films and television is so much bigger than for theatre.
It's difficult for me to say, but I don't think the sex scenes are particularly erotic.
It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.
There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible.
You feel a lot of rage when someone dies. I have a lot of faith in nature, but it can be cruel.
Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.
You need to gain the confidence that you're doing enough on film. You must resist the temptation to do too much.
A lot of actors, you can't get them to shut up. Instead of listening and watching, they're always telling you something.
It's a very dangerous and lonely thing, I imagine, to be a spy: to have friendships that are deceptions, that are not honest.
If I were to do a sequel, it would be with Sophie as a very old woman and The BFG the same, a bit like that 'Let the Right One' in film.
When I was a child, Sunday afternoons felt like they could last a week or a month. Increasingly, as I get older, time is going so, so fast.
And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.
I'm quite simple, really. I like to play and inhabit my character. I really like to inhabit the situation. It's the situation that intrigues me.
And people do enjoy the plays at completely different levels. And, likewise, they enjoy the authorship question... at completely different levels.
I think, early on, I was very distrustful of authority yet needed a lot of approval from it. I was in that kind of bind. Which is a kind of abuse bind.
It's strange how the mind works while you're acting, because you have all sorts of quick thoughts going on as well as the motivations with the character.
I have a lot of ideas come to me when I'm working that are different from the plan, and sometimes that can be a little overwhelming and difficult for directors.
So there's a lot of people tied into believing that the traditional response to the authorship question. In terms of actors, some people get very angry about it.
I did audition a lot. One's agent is keen to get you into film and TV because there's more money. I was always getting myself into commitments to theatre companies.
I had to turn down a part in 'Empire of the Sun.' It would have paid £15,000, which was a year's earnings for me then, but I was offered a season at the 'National Theatre.'
I just absolutely needed the theatre so desperately - it was my fate; it was where I was running towards. It was the place where I found peace and survival and all kinds of things.
I don't think humanity is the highest form of life that will ever exist in the universe. Maybe that's a bit cynical. But most of the people I know are loving, kind, doing their best.
Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth.
If there was no fame involved and very minimal money - which is the case for most actors - I'd still be doing it. If I wasn't good enough to be a professional, I'd be an amateur actor.
I love poetry. If my mind gets a bit tight or bound up with information or depressed with bad news, I find a good book of poetry is like going to the gym for an hour. My mind just expands.
It's nice being offered a lot of interesting films and being asked to take part in things that are quite curious. If you hunt and keep looking, there are some wonderful things that come out.
Some actors are frightened and concentrating so hard on their own performance, you don't feel that anything you do makes any difference. They're just kicking a ball against a wall, so to speak.
Nature is very cruel. It is much riskier to love any living being than not. I'm painfully aware that even my little dog is a walking bundle of mortality. I'm painfully aware he's going to pass.
I have great mood swings, maybe because of playing lots of different characters as I do. I'm like a gymnast whose muscles get too stretched. I've got better at it, but I have a lot of emotional energy.
It's amazing how much the sense of telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end helps me to relax. I find that the mass of stories that one is subjected to living one's life is otherwise overwhelming.
The scientific-rational mindset is as much a cosmology as the Catholic mindset was in the Middle Ages; scientists are so proud of their mindset and convinced that it's the only reality. I find that worrying.
We have people we admire, like Einstein, saying mystery is the most beautiful thing a human being can experience. Yet, everywhere in our culture, everything that is truly mysterious is immediately dismissed.
In a way, I think science is the modern religion, and at times, I despise it as much as I despise other religions because it really will only accept stuff that fits its masculine ability to define the world.
I'm still struggling with whether I might want to get off the Internet. More and more people I know have. Daniel Day Lewis doesn't do the Internet at all, and I noticed he had many more books open around his house.
My accent does slip. When I arrived in England in 1978 at 18, I was shocked to find myself 'the American' at RADA. The English and the Americans have an intense relationship. They helped us out in the Second World War.
It's an awful thing to be aware of your own corruption. I think a lot of people are bound by the particular economic system we work in to serve companies and masters who aren't really telling people what they're doing.
There are still people, obviously, who are stopping you and want a selfie because they need to justify their own lives by being in close proximity to a celebrity... but those are minor with me. I'm not a major celebrity.
You're stealing people's secrets. You convince them to give up their life and imagine the life you've created is real or more interesting. If it's a good play, they'll cry or think private thoughts about their lives or laugh.
But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.
I think that was very important to Bacon... personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it was Francis Bacon, because it is very difficult to prove.