Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Art is the job of the privileged.
I knew very early on that I wasn't Brad Pitt.
I've got four kids - I unblock a toilet every day.
I wanted to work with Bryan Singer because I like his films.
My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do.
The hardest thing to do and most miserable films are comedies.
I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.
My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it.
I didn't do well at school, and I don't have lots of academic reference points.
I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.
I could not be one of those actors who stays in character all day long. I'd go mad.
I always think of Gilbert Norrell as being Salieri to Jonathan Strange being Mozart.
The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.
I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me.
My friends I grew up with were so supportive to me. And I'm not the only one who's done well.
Private education can give you confidence, which is marvellous; a sense of entitlement isn't.
I know what I try to do. I try to be professional, turn up, not make too much fuss, do the job.
I love the fact that everyone's trying to be good-looking in L.A. - then I turn up and I get work.
I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.
I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.
Magic symbolises the subconscious - that part of us that is creative and powerful that we sometimes don't tap into.
I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish.
Major film stars tend to do a film and then have a couple of months off. I'm not a major film star; I'm a jobbing actor.
If your character doesn't express himself or doesn't feel confident expressing himself, then you don't express yourself.
Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.
The characters in 'Ray Donovan' are not very articulate - we're the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A.
I'm like a mechanic. If you break down and phone the AA, they'll come to you whether it's raining or snowing. That's what an actor should do.
I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there.
I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me.
I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film. I thought 'Lock Stock' was a good film because I think it was a one-off before it was imitated a hundred times.
Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better!
I'm very blue collar myself. So it was easy for me to embody that in a sense. It's much harder for me to embody Norrell than it is to embody Terry Donovan.
There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.
You're not going to have something set on a council estate that explores all elements of human existence, the variety of experience inherent in any community.
You turn up on set, and somebody who has come out of Oxford, has done a BBC course, is telling you how to act. You think, 'Do me a favour. Go and make a coffee.'
Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I'm not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it's as a craftsman.
'Ray Donovan' is very dark and very serious. As actors will tell you, the darker and more serious the material, the more jokes that go around set. It's a counterbalance.
If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do.
I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.
What I love about the East End is that theres a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.
What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.
I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.
I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me.
When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.
In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time.
I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.
It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.
I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.
My idea is just to do something different each time; the next thing I do has to be completely different to the thing I've done before - that's what I try and do, because you know, I'm an actor, not a film star.