Colin Firth
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.
As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.
They're not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it's not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques.
Obviously, if people love a movie, and it has the possibility of continuation, then there is going to be a question of whether it's worth doing another one. There's also cynicism and skepticism about sequels.
I've grown up surrounded by Americans and to a very large extent feel American. It sounds strange because I seem to be so quintessentially English in everyone's mind - and perhaps I am. Perhaps it's quintessentially English to have a fascination with America.
If you play a role, you want to familiarize yourself with that person's world. If I were playing an airline pilot or a doctor, I'd probably want to hang out with a doctor or an airplane pilot for a while, ask some questions. You don't get to hang out the kings. They don't help consult on movies. So your resources are, by necessity, secondary.
In filming, you're waiting - you're waiting for lights, you're waiting for people to set things up - and when you're not waiting, you're repeating.
I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth, but one of them was that he doesn't rehearse, and another was that he doesn't really direct. If he doesn't like it... he cuts it out of the movie or even replaces you. And he doesn't talk to you.
Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.Collection: Life
It's a very dangerous state. You are inclined to recklessness and kind of tune out the rest of your life and everything that's been important to you. It's actually not all that pleasurable. I don't know who the hell wants to get in a situation where you can't bear an hour without somebody's company.Collection: Love
I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: `Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.Collection: Men
I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.Collection: Character
You have to be ill if you want to get better.Collection: Get Better
I'll be your friend so long as you're not crapCollection: Long
I'm just the last English twit, really.Collection: Lasts
Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.Collection: Queens
Nothing brings you closer together than blind terror.Collection: Together
The skill of a good actor is to make it always seem like you're in that fantastically spontaneous moment. Very often, a stand-up comedian has a different instinct, which is to reinvent. Once you've laid down some material, and made them laugh, you move on and find some new material.Collection: Moving
When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.Collection: Book
I have almost no memory of them [St. Trinian's films]. I don't think I've seen them since I was quite young. I was a bit frightened of the girls. I fancied them. Even though I was young, I found them attractive and rather frightening. I've always been attracted to frightening girls! I'm married to one!Collection: Girl
I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.Collection: Thinking
I love you even when you're sick and look disgusting.Collection: Love You
Maybe it's shallow of me to have a wife that's so beautiful, but it makes things easier. To me she's the most beautiful woman in the world.Collection: Beautiful
It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.Collection: Eyelashes
What infuriates me is that in America violence is judged in context, whereas language is not. So with language there is an arithmetic that says: one f*** is a PG 13, two f***s is an R. They don't say: one bullet through one head is a PG 13, two bullets through more than two heads is an R.Collection: Two
Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.Collection: Men
It didn't have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it's notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don't think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: "dying is easy, comedy is hard." I hear it.Collection: Thinking
I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth. But, one of them was that he doesn't rehearse and another was that he doesn't really direct, if he doesn't like it...he cuts it out of the movie, or even replaces you.Collection: Cutting
Less racist now but it has been. I don't think it's been completely stamped out. There's a class element to it. And who's supposed to do what. You're very unlikely to get a gay grip.Collection: Gay
On his fight scene with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones: It was a delicious experience.Collection: Fighting
I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy's is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science, in a way. And when you're filming, the thing comedy depends on becomes a much more difficult commodity. The thing you depend on is spontaneity.Collection: Drama
However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor.Collection: Directors
I've actually heard people protesting furiously about straight male costume people as well. It's not universal and there are examples that break the mould all over the place. In my experience, it's more prevalent in the UK than in America.Collection: America
The way I've described Helen's sort of rigorous honesty I just think he also has tremendously. It's very strange... he just has this sort of way of making it happen really. You're not really aware of being directed, so much as being a part of this thing.Collection: Honesty
There's no point in it unless it's a story that you really want to tell. It's a nebulous job. Unless you're doing it well, you're not doing anything. And there are a few of those. It's perfectly possible to be a passenger on a film set because if somebody else has written it, you can make nothing of that role and that's exactly what bad directors do.Collection: Jobs
I can't bring you absolute truth in the detailed factual sense. All I can do is bring you an interpretation as I understand it. That's all you can ever get from an actor.Collection: Actors
And that is a hard route for a woman to come through. There's still a lot of roles that have to be conformed to. It's quite an old fashioned environment in a lot of ways.Collection: Roles
When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week's wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam's fair trade campaign helps right this wrong.Collection: Country
I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."Collection: Thinking
If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.Collection: Teacher
Doing a job, or even watching a film, can make a difference to your life, but I don't think it ever has an explosive impact where your life will never be the same again. It kind of seeps into your life, and perhaps realise you're a little more vigilant about certain things than you might have been.Collection: Jobs
So, if you haven't picked up some tips during an apprenticeship like that, you shouldn't be directing. It doesn't mean you can do it, but it loads you up with information.Collection: Mean
The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.Collection: Writing
When I look in the mirror, I don't see my Dad, I see my grandmother. For a while it was my mother looking back at me. If only it was my Dad.Collection: Mother
If you're playing someone who's got marital problems, you have to play someone who's trying not to have marital problems. So, you've got to get into the problem first.Collection: Play
No matter how much technique you draw on or how much training you have, acting is a mystery.Collection: Training
I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long.Collection: Running
Just driving I just was in a car on flat ground and I couldn't make it go. Having ticked driving and taken three driving lessons, I just was unable to produce any motion whatsoever under perfectly normal circumstances. I think we've all been busted on driving, and riding.Collection: Taken