British Quotes

I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

When you start playing music when you're quite young, it's easy to stay young. And then you're touring, and you see people who've been on the road for 10 or 15 years and they just haven't grown up at all.

The weird thing is, I'm very private.

I've never really thought of myself as a singer.

I've always had this thing where I can't stop. I hate standing still.

I'd love to do film and soundtracks, and you couldn't do much better than James Bond.

I can only speak for myself, but public school did nothing for me musically. I got the impression a musical career was frowned upon. But in the arts, resistance can often be the strongest inspiration.

For your songs to connect with people, they've got to mean something to you.

Creatively, I try to always look forward and look at the next thing I want to do.

I go on expeditions for the same reason an estate agent sells houses - to pay the bills.

I don't plan a career. That doesn't work for me. I just have to go with my gut.

I don't feel particularly comfortable about actors using whatever power they may have to push their beliefs, unless they're extremely well informed.

I don't feel I'm playing villains all the time.

I couldn't get as big as a bodybuilder. I tried to put on as much weight in the right places as I could. My weightlifting was impressive for me, but not for some of the guys I see down at the gym.

I certainly gained a lot by reading about Shanghai.

I can't go and shoot people in the back of the head because It's a kids' movie, which is actually quite a good test because you haven't got the overt threat of a knife in the face.

Going to the movies was a big event in my youth. My father would be the initiator - he'd have me put on a jacket to see a film.

God is not anything human. God is a force, God is chaos, God is unknown. God is terror and enlightenment at the same time.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.

And although I've been very fortunate in the film work that's come my way, I need to get back to the stage. If I'm away for a maximum of two years, I feel something's wrong.

Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.

You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.

We'd all like to believe that perhaps people could stop killing each other.

The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

Little moments can have a feeling and a texture that is very real.

Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they're tender. They have to be persistent.

Within the process of filming, unexpected situations occur.

I guess I'd love to be surprised by something I had never thought of.