Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's important to read as much as you can because you never know when you will find the best script that you want to do next. I'm always quite picky in what I read and what I go for.
I've spent a lot of my teenage years working on sets. I've missed out on more than just playing rugby, but I think I've managed to keep my feet on the ground and keep my friends around me.
I had friends who ran off to become ski instructors or worked in cool bars, and I often envied them, but I know I'd quickly become bored with that kind of life. I always need to push myself.
I've always had a social awareness. My favorite channel on TV is BBC News 24. For a while, I had to have it on repeat in my house. I've always been interested in what's going on in the world.
It's really important to take time for yourself because if you don't know what it is like to be a real person and spend time with a sense of normality, how can you play normal people in films?
I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that.
I took up drama and did so much extracurricular work, like the National Youth Theatre and Guildhall's Saturday school. Acting is where I felt most comfortable and how I wanted to express myself.
I tried to forget about playing Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet' and just think about him as a normal guy, as a normal character, and just try and approach him the same I would every other character.
You can have an amazing director and terrible script, and the film's not going to be great. But if you have the most incredible script and an okay director, you could still get a really good film.
I'm just trying to choose interesting, quirky projects or things with interesting directors or just movies that have a lot of people I like attached to them so I know I'm going to have a good time.
I love art. My sister is an artist and my mother is a painter, so it is very much in the family. I haven't ever wanted to be a fine artist myself - my sister robbed me of my artistic talent, I think.
It's a bit of a cliche, but I think girls like to get flowers. I think books are quite romantic, too. If you can find an interesting book, that brings something out in your partner that can be very romantic.
With our job, you often meet people through work. I've had two long-term relationships, from 14 to 18 and 19 to 21. One I met at school and the other I met on a job so who knows where I'll meet the next person.
The movie is so fun. I've done period pieces before but nothing with this twist. And the movie is just full of such wonderful people, such young actors - people like Matt Smith that I've been friends with for a while.
Ultimately I'll probably end up going out with an actress again. But an architect would be cool. They need to do something creative. I'm attracted to talent. But it would maybe be healthier if it wasn't in the industry.
I got to be about 13 and everyone started playing guitars and being in rock bands. There was no place for me with my trumpet and I wasn't cool anymore. Although now if I played the trumpet it would be the coolest thing in the world.
I would be the last person on earth to complain about what I do - I feel very fortunate and I know there are a million jobs in the world that are much, much harder - but it's not always an easy or glamorous thing to do, that's for sure.
When I was younger, I looked a lot older than I was. They have these working laws in England where you have to be 16: if you're over 16, you don't have to be restrained by working hours and things like that. In America, it's actually 18.
The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face.
I want to be challenged, I want to keep challenging myself - whether or not it's changing yourself physically or just pushing yourself to a certain extreme. I get bored quite easily so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.
I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.
I'd love to work with Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, but these are dreams I don't need to rush to achieve. I'll be ready to make those movies when I'm ready to make those movies and they're ready to make them with me, if they ever want to.
Travel is best when it's as unplanned as possible so that you get that real sense of adventure. The film 'Thelma and Louise' really encapsulates that - their travels are unplanned and spontaneous and therefore full of excitement, escapism and optimism.
Going over to Lesvos in Greece and meeting some of these poor refugees who have just made the treacherous sea crossing opened my eyes in a way I can't even being to describe. It's put a fire in my belly to really try to do something, the little I can do.
Some people can very easily switch off and be guilt free, not that what I'm doing is about guilt, but they can completely disconnect and not care because it doesn't affect them. I've always really cared about what happens and felt a certain responsibility.
I've said I won't eat meat until the whole world can eat it responsibly, which is going to be hard. It's becoming more and more fashionable to eat more and more meat and they've just made it fashionable to eat meat in the east in China, which is a massive population.
[London is] one of the best cities in the world. There is just so much culture there and so much history and so much diversity. It's just a perfect place to grow up. I studied at the Guildhall every Saturday so I'd always be in town every weekend doing that. I was kind of a city boy really.
One of the biggest things I used to struggle with was about things like going on holiday. Whereas all your friends can talk about something and plan something all year long, I know that I'm probably going to be away and I'm going to miss all of it. If a job comes up, you just can't be there.
The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones, but it's not like working a 9-5 job and only having two or three weeks off a year. I may not have seen my girlfriend for two or three months, but then we can spend two or three months together solidly.
I like to wake up late, around 11 A.M., especially if I have been out the night before. Then I go to brunch with either my friends or my girlfriend. I then like to just chill out: read the papers, read some scripts and then take it very easy. If it's sunny, I go for a walk with my dog, Niles, in the countryside.
Have you seen Cowspiracy? It takes a lot more land to feed a meat eater than to feed a vegan or a vegetarian. It's something I'd love to get into but it's very hard to persuade people to stop things they've been doing for a long time. So maybe it needs to start with the next generation. Everyone needs to raise their children with a bit more responsibility.
I love to ride horses. I've ridden since I was a kid so I got to do some riding, which was a lot of fun. But most of the stunts were left to the girls. It's the girls rescuing the guys mostly. So it was kind of really kick-ass, girl power. It was wonderful to watch. It was particularly sexy. They would come in and just slay in these choreographed pentagram of death fight scenes. It was pretty impressive.
I love Leonardo DiCaprio. He just makes really great films with great directors. He has great relationships with directors but also has a great social awareness. I think he balances his work with his responsibilities to his world, the environment, things like that very well. I'm very impressed by him and I admire him a lot. And other actors like Joaquin Phoenix, I just look at him and marvel at his unexpectedness, just his work really.
I've had friends who have come away who've said, "I shouldn't have become such close friends with the director." You always want to get on with the director, but I personally prefer a relationship where you respect them - you get on really well with them, but they're boss, as it were. It's about trusting your director, for better or for worse. They're the one's seeing what's coming out on the monitors, so you have to try and trust what they say.
If you don't practice for three days, everyone will notice." It's something you have to really maintain. So unfortunately, I don't play it that often but I may take it up again. If you don't play for a while, you just can't hit the notes. It's like going to the gym. If you go and do weights, you can lift x amount of weight and if you don't go for ages, you've gotta start again and start from the beginning. So it's a bit like that. It's just a muscle.
Nothing's been changed overnight. It's like watching your cat grow: you see it every day, so you don't really see it change, you wake up one day and it's a bloody great thing. Your friends come round who you haven't seen for a couple months and they're like, "Oh my god, your cat's grown so much again." And I'm like, "Has it?" But when you're living it... I just find that my life has subtly changed bit by bit, so I don't ever really notice it too much.
I'm quite severely dyslexic so I struggle with acting in certain ways. I always have to put in triple the amount of effort, which would always frustrate me a lot. I suppose that some people can just look at a script once and know it. That's not me. I really have to spend a bit of time with the lines. But it's my job and I've got better and better at it. If you're learning a lot, things start going quicker. Doing the lines with repetition and you just get it in your head somehow.
I looked pretty crazy but at the time, you don't think anything of it. You think, "I've got an amazing job. I'm working and this is cool." I remember I was being fit to go to a premiere for something at Burberry and Christopher Bailey, who designs the clothes there, saw a picture of me and I looked weird. I had short black hair, hardly any eyebrows, I looked very very thin and he went, "We need to put Douglas in a campaign." So four days later, I was shooting a Burberry campaign because he had seen me looking crazy from the show so that was kind of funny.
You're always going to have ups and downs - if you look at the careers of a whole bunch of people I respect, some of them have good movies, some of them have bad movies. I remember Andrew Garfield said that the only power we really have as actors - or one of the main powers we have as actors - is our choices. We can make interesting choices, but as soon as you've made that choice, so much else is in play: the director, the script can change, the other actors. All you can do is try to make interesting choices and, once you're in it, just do the best you can.
I wanted to become an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is one of the main drama schools in London where you go when you are older. But I was doing the junior one when I was a kid. And some friends there had agents. I was fourteen and I was like, "I want an agent! It sounds awesome!" I had no idea what that was. I thought those guys looked like men in black. They were hanging around in suits all the time. So I luckily got a very good agent in London and started auditioning. And then when I was 16, I got my first film and I've been working ever since.
Often you find actors have big hearts; they're quite emotional people. Talking to actors who date other actors, and talking to people who deal with other actors, they often get emotionally caught up in lots of different things. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves. They feel things quite a lot - often to the nth degree, which I can imagine could make it quite difficult to date some of us. I think it's about having an emotional availability that you can kind of draw on. But I'm also searching for that. I'll be searching for the answer to that question for the rest of my life.