English Quotes

Lots of middle class people are running around pretending to be Cockney.

Jacobean plays, before Shakespeare, were particularly visceral.

It can be very difficult to trace your birth parents.

I've never been up with the times, always been slightly out of step.

I went being unemployed for three years to being the lead in a British feature in the days when we only made two a year, 1990. It was ridiculous really.

I wasn't always such a great fan of Shakespeare, mind you. I can guess we all at one time had it rammed down our necks at school, which tends to take the edge off it.

I want to direct but I think I'd be bloody awful and I don't want to produce but I think I'd be a very good producer because if I believed in something I'd be able to protect it.

I used my instincts. It's very easy to imagine how you'd feel, actually. I just had to tell the narrative.

I think the themes of belonging and parentage and love are obviously universal.

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium.

I only ever worked on interiors, and an interior is an interior. I don't know what they did about exteriors.

I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.

I love Dead Ringers. A democratic set, the work was taken seriously.

I know exactly where I've come from, I know exactly who my mum and dad are.

I heard the various terms of abuse at school and probably indulged them in the way you do as a kid.

I had to help to coax the performances and I really enjoyed that extra responsibility.

I had bags of energy as a kid.

I got a tiny part in a play, auditioned for another one and got that as well. Not only that, the first finished on the Saturday and the other started on the Monday which is like an actor's dream!

I don't see a lot of films. I'm quite choosy, but there's certain films that stick out.

I don't like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

I care more about telly because it made me an actor and there's a much more immediate response to TV. You can address the political or cultural fabric of your country.

Any horror element is as much psychological as special effects.

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.

I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.

I am not afraid of death, but would not want to die in some obscure or pointless way.

One must never look for happiness: one meets it by the way.

A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.

It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word 'evil' as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate.

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confi

It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?