James Purefoy
I think, as an actor, I would find it a little run-of-the-mill doing procedurals where it's the same sort of thing week in and week out. Your character doesn't get to grow very much, which, purely from an actor's point of view, you want to see an arc of your character.
I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, 'Rome,' in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.
All cult leaders are very good at supplying people with what they want and are missing in their lives, so they feel loved and that they belong.
You really need to learn how to turn it on for 'action' and off for 'cut.'
I am not a big fan of what I call 'ambient television,' which just washes through you in a very polite way. I like television that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.
Once you have kids, horror movies become too horrible to watch because you imagine your own children in those situations, so you stop watching them.
When you're dealing with killing people and things that are upsetting, that can be a delicate place to occupy yourself for a day.Collection: Occupy Yourself
Somebody doing something effortlessly is a lovely thing to watch.Collection: Lovely
We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.Collection: Hero
Im not a big fan of patterns. I like the unexpected.Collection: Fans
One of the things that makes this so topical right now is that I think there are an awful lot of American men - and women, but I'm a man, so that's what I can talk about - who feel the American dream has let them down.Collection: Dream
I've never been "celeb-y" actor. You know, you don't catch me falling out of nightclubs at three o'clock in the morning. Well, very rarely! But I find it all a bit baffling, the whole celeb thing and I don't really get it.Collection: Morning
What I went into the acting business for was to have a certain amount of chaos in my life. I don't know what I'm doing next. It's exciting. That's the way I like it.Collection: Acting
Actors are their own worst enemies. They quite often will get in their own way, and I have to be encouraged, endlessly, not to get in my own way.Collection: Worst Enemy
I think the James Bond thing has sailed. But of course I would want to be a Bond villain. They are great parts. I think it's highly unlikely, but one can always dream.Collection: Dream
I don't have much time for real violence at all. I think there are infinitely better ways of changing the world than using violence. Sitting round a table talking is a pretty good start.Collection: Real
You need to be disciplined and you need to try to occupy a zone of acting that is always quite scary because you don't think you're doing anything.Collection: Thinking
Actors tend to get better with age. You start cutting away the useless stuff and achieving a point of effortlessness and simplicity, which is all you want to do, with any art at all.Collection: Art
I often think that drama helps people feel less lonely about things.Collection: Lonely
One of the things that I discovered in my research is that some serial killers build an ultimate reality around themselves that they believe in, 100%.Collection: Believe
If you're playing Hitler, you don't play Hitler as an asshole. Hitler believed what he was doing was right. Any of those monsters and any serial killer believes in what they're doing. I play it subjectively.Collection: Believe
One of the great things about drama is that it makes you feel like you're not a crackpot, and that there are other people who think and feel the way you do.Collection: Drama
It has taken a long time for me to be able to really just be in front of the camera.Collection: Taken
To be brutally honest, I am a little bit of a Clint Eastwood nerd. Clint Eastwood who was the man who drew me into movies. When everybody else was watching Star Wars, I was watching Fistful of Dollars.Collection: Stars
I like television that grabs you by your throat.Collection: Television
My life is really precious. I don't want to spend it watching ambient TV that just drifts through you. I've got better things to do.Collection: Want
I'd never read a piece of television where it's an hour script and it's perfect.Collection: Perfect
If you're going to lead people, you better know how to manipulate people, and you have to be pretty smart to be able to do that.Collection: Smart
I like doing things that are very wildly different. I find that the meat and vegetables of being an actor is doing things that are completely different, all the time.Collection: Vegetables
I couldn't do the same job for 30 years. That would make me want to kill myself. Other people do it and they're very happy doing it, but for me, that's not what I want. I like changing things, all the time.Collection: Jobs
Acting gives me a chance to be people I will never be, in real life. I like changing who I am.Collection: Real
One of the reasons a lot of actors go into the business is that for a short period of time, you get to be other people who you can only fantasize about being, by and large.Collection: People
I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.Collection: Pride