Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a very good actor.
Scary things are good, aren't they?
I write constantly about everything.
I like to cook and go to Whole Foods.
Some people are defined by what they do.
The phrase 'dream career' sounds pretty stupid.
I don't talk about my friends behind their back.
It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people.
My baby pukes on me. It's life. It's very much a normal life.
I'm drawn to people rather than mediums - directors, writers, actors.
I wasn't a child actor. It was just three weeks of my life when I was eight.
I don't have a general archetypal platonic shadow, 'acting' concept about it.
I dont think I could do a superhero movie. Im just not really that type of guy.
I don't think I could do a superhero movie. I'm just not really that type of guy.
I don't have a set way of preparing for something. You just have to take it seriously.
If a film is being made by an intelligent director, they're going to cast the right guy.
I'd go as far as it takes. There's never too far. You do what you have to do for your girl.
'American Buffalo' is special. I can't wait to fight to make an audience feel about it as I do.
The most important thing is, whatever you do decide to choose, take it seriously and do your best.
Basically, I was a very serious film fan. I watched a lot of cinema and contemporary and European film.
To be an English person in my 20s, doing a Broadway show - it's one of the mountains I wanted to climb.
As a Shakespeare character, if you can persuade someone in a sentence or a speech, you've got it right.
My career may look bizarre to some, but I have very strong reasons for doing every single job I've done.
In England, theater auditions are gentler experiences. You sit down with the director and talk about the play.
If I'd been a parent to myself, I would have been scared because I was only ever interested in my own thoughts.
It's not often talked about what a wonderful feeling it is to see someone that you care about love and be loved.
That sounds stupid, but in most films that take six months, you're actually spending four weeks to do a fight scene.
So many things I thought I was doing have fallen apart. Until I've finished filming, I don't believe I have the job.
I always think that period between the ages of 18 and 24 is such a bizarre stage, and the two people at either end are always very different.
The first word that always came into my head with Henry VI was 'empathy.' He doesn't have a barrier between what other people feel and what he feels.
There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.
As children, my siblings and I were actively discouraged from acting. I have no memories of going on set with my parents - aside from 'Gulliver's Travels.'
I found that the more I'd done Shakespeare, and the more I trusted my instincts and applied the same rules you would apply to any scene, the closer I got to how it's meant to be acted.
There I am, watching Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favourite actors in the world, walk into the room dressed up as Father Christmas, being hilarious, and I'm suddenly thinking, 'Where am I?'
Mental health is such a complex thing and so difficult to diagnose. What is a mental problem? Who does have mental problems? What's the difference between mental problems and depression and sadness?
It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.
I left school early in my last year before I took my A-levels. I wasn't expelled. It was just a mutual understanding. I wasn't interested in going to school and they said, 'You're not turning up,' so we severed ties. Both sides appreciated it.
'1984' is terrifyingly relevant. It generates a political conversation, but it's an exciting piece of theatre. Every day, there are things to be spawned from Orwell's mind, whether it's in England or America, terrorist-related or government-related.
There are few things that are more revealing about someone than the way that they talk about a piece of literature or a play. You very quickly come to have a much deeper understanding of someone than you would if you just mingled together in a pub saying, 'All right, how are you?'
Even the way Mamet describes silences within his plays is different. There are pauses; there are pauses within parentheses; there are pauses before dialogue; there are pauses in the spaces between the dialogue - there's this extraordinary vocabulary of silence which is all there on the page, mapped out.
You know that scene at the beginning (of 'Pirate Radio') where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That's genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I'd hadn't seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, 'Take him a cup of tea.' So that's what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.