Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm becoming more indulgent and less giving as an actor as I get older. I'm immersing myself more in roles emotionally.
The whole film genre is one of deceit. It is the suspension of disbelief. That's what all theater and all film is based on.
I go to work, and I work very hard. I'm loyal, generous, true, kind, fair - all those boxes are ticked. I'm going to Heaven.
Very often, actors have to face being rejected time and again, and we must remember that the red carpet lasts just a minute.
In terms of partying and reckless abandon, I'm Don Juan. But, in terms of my heart, I'm the most loyal man you'll ever meet.
I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time.
What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.
I'm a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can't stop... then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, 'Oh God, yeah, books!'
As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.
More than any other super-hero, 'Spider-Man' presents us with something very local in its ethics. It's not messianic. It's far more tangible.
You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.
I've reached a point in my career when I can demand certain conditions, and one of them is a weekend break every three weeks during the shoot.
I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss.
Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive.
I'm a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.
It is joyous for any actor to enter other grounds of consciousness and thought. At the end of the day, we just all like dressing up and playing around.
I come from a culture where the pub is the centre of the community. The pub is the Internet. It's where information is gathered, collated and addressed.
Whereas Superman is a godlike guy from another planet and Batman is this mysterious, unknowable billionaire, everyone in 'Spider-Man' is human and flawed.
I am the least likely person in the world to be in an American football film! Which is why I couldn't say no to The Replacements; I thought it was hilarious.
If you had to find a period in history that would equate to what the Internet has presented us with now, it would be Elizabethan England. It was a world in flux.
For me, 'Come and See' is, by a million miles, the best film about war that has ever been made. I would highly recommend, encourage and enforce anyone to watch it.
I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me.
I just don't take myself as seriously anymore. But as a result of that, I am taking myself more seriously. My ego has gone on holiday, and it can't get a flight back home.
When you act, you've got to be like a poet or a musician. It's not about evidence before court. It's not a forensic subject. It's poetry; it's a completely different place.
I think that Liverpool's particular modern history lends itself to the cinema better than London in many ways. When you go to Liverpool, you absorb that whole sound and humour.
I think Jesus was a bit more of a fun guy. I'd like to play Him like maybe some days He doesn't fancy it, being God. Some days He's miracled-out and just wants to go have a smoke.
Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.
Acting is a tough, difficult job with long unsociable hours, although it can be a brilliant job, too. I don't want to complain too much, as nurses, farmers and teachers are out working long hours.
The joy of a period film is that you're taken to another world. The costumes determine the way you move, and then consequently the way you breathe. And then, the way you breathe effects the way you think.
Whenever you're doing film for television and you look at the budget that you have, which is much more constricted than a movie budget, you think, "God, are they going to be able to do what they say they are?"
I'm interested in playing Rasputin at some point. I find him such a fascinating character and a fascinating period in Russian history. Either Rasputin or Jesus. I think I have more of a chance to play Rasputin.
I'll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It's my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it's not England, it's London.
There is no such thing as a criminal life. Life is life, and life is criminalized. No one ever, in the history of life, has chosen a criminal life. No one has ever said, 'I want to be a criminal.' No one ever has done that.
The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that.
I don't have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That's what children do, and that's what CGI enables us to do.
The strange thing is, if I was speaking to drama students about the thing that you should do if you're lucky enough to know or to meet the character that you're playing, I'd say, 'It's obvious: you quiz them diligently about their experience.'
Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss.
There's two kinds of rock n' roll casualty: the one that has huge success and adoration, and then suddenly it stops. Or there's when you're in a band: it is all-consuming, so then you have the dream of that, and then the dream's taken away from you even before it happens.
I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.
I've done a lot of Shakespeare onstage, and I'm not convinced that the Earl of Oxford was the author of all those works, but I am convinced that the Stratfordian William Shakespeare was not. My feeling is that it was an amalgamation of many writers, in the same way that most films are a collaborative endeavor.
Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.
We're both Welshmen and growing up, when Howard Marks was finally caught, it was all over the news. He did an interview in the Welsh language, which I also speak, and I was sort of just amazed that this man from a small country was for many years supplying much of the world with most of the marijuana it was smoking. It was incredible.
Howard Marks is very intelligent and well read, eloquent, witty, charming. I think it was those qualities that got him through. I was interested to explore that because generally, we perceive criminals as dark, twisted, angry characters. Howard isn't any of those. He was punished for his crime, released from prison, and has lived to tell the tale.
When Howard Marks came out of prison, years later, I met him at a concert in South Wales; I was a young whippersnapper and Howard was kind of an outlaw hero. I said to him - and it's on tape, a cousin of his filmed our meeting - I said, "If you write a book, I want to play you in a movie." He said, "Let's shake on it," and we did. Thirteen years later, there we were, making the movie.
But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed].