English Quotes

Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.

He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

He knows not his own strength that has not met adversity.

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.

A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house.

There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

If you ever have the good fortune to meet Tippi Hedren, she's an amazing woman. You can't quite believe she is the age she is.

I've got to tell you, I've played real characters before and people always bring up this word 'impersonation,' and I'm never entirely sure what it means.

I would absolutely like to play more leading roles. There's no philosophy - well, the only philosophy, I suppose, is to try and do different things.

I work best when a little scared, when there's so much more than the lines to think about.

I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.

I was a fan of Hitchcock, but more importantly than that, he is such an inscrutable man, and a very carefully inscrutable man. He apparently was blank-faced with a calm and controlled presence. I was immediately anxious and thought, 'How am I going to get behind that?'

I think it will be, as always, interesting to compare different portrayals of Hitchcock. I'm very honored that I'm playing the same part as Anthony Hopkins.

I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.

I studied Hitchcock a little bit at University and knew the famous story about the Birds - that he'd tortured Tippi for a day using real birds. I had no idea that it was a five-day onslaught and that it was the tip of an iceberg that carried on through to another film.

I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other.

I often get sent scripts about little men in big situations. There's a comic element to it, which is forces stacked against this little guy, and how is he going to defeat them?

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain.

I had to change the shape of my own voice. It was quite hard to pull off and so once I had it, I stayed in Hitchcock's voice all day on set.

I get plenty of time to re-engage with the world I'm trying to depict, so I'm not always living in these parallel worlds.

I don't know if it's harder but when you're playing a real person you want to honor their memory - even if they're a criminal or someone that the public loathed. That can be challenging.

I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.

I didn't sound anything like Capote at the screen test. It was more like Bob Dylan. In his early years. With the flu.

Hitchcock's got a very interesting voice; it's a very controlled, measured rhythm that's quite slow and, in that sense, also felt quite controlling in its pace. He retained something from his childhood, that London sound, as well as adopting some of the L.A. sounds... All of this helps you create th

Hitchcock is a big ask. I am playing someone significantly older than me and someone significantly bigger than me. The stuff I find very interesting is why certain physical things have come about. How can he be light on his feet when he is so big? How can his weight vary so much? Where does this rat

Four hours of prosthetics every morning, the jowls and the nose, and it was very hot so they're having to attend to it all day, and you're still petrified of so many things, such as, can I speak properly? Hitchcock never quite lost those East End vowels, even though he had the softened California co

Every now and then, they ask me to come in and improvise with Stanley Tucci for an afternoon. They fly me off to America, I improvise for an afternoon - it's not the hardest, most taxing job.

Certainly for my father, there were great times, good times, not-so-good times. He might be shooting a Fellini film for six months, then not working for two months. I'm used to that dynamic.