Jeremy Irons
I came to London. I spent nine months doing domestic work and gardening because I knew I wanted to get a West End show. So, when I was offered jobs in Stoke or Leicester or whatever, I'd say no. Eventually, I got 'Godspell.' It was gently building.Collection: Gardening
We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.Collection: Dreams
You can be in love and raise a family wonderfully by not being married, but actually, marriage does give us a strength, because it's quite hard to get out of, and so it makes us fight more to keep it together. If divorce becomes dead easy - which it sort of has - then we don't have that backup. Because, for everybody, relationships are hard.Collection: Marriage
So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.Collection: Failure
I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.Collection: Failure
The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.Collection: Sad
And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.Collection: Trust
A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you're playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you're playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you're playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality.
There's a great thing about amateur sport: it is purer. And the athletes are not open to so much pressure with amateur sport.
Commerce seems to be covering every aspect of our lives now. Which me, because I'm a romantic, is sad for me to say.
The older I get, the less busy I like to be.
The danger of dioxins in our environment, our food chain, and our bodies is difficult to illustrate, since they are not visible to the naked eye. My time in Vietnam allowed me to see the result of large quantities of them and therefore understand better the insidiousness of the smaller quantities that have found their way into our lives and bodies.
I believe that most people would like to cooperate in reducing waste, but to encourage them, the national policy should be clear, well advertised, and consistent. Even within Greater London, there is a huge discrepancy between council policies. I believe a national waste management initiative should be designed and implemented by government.
Nowhere are emissions monitored constantly. So the truth is that the real quantity of dioxin emissions from incineration remains unknown.
I do what I do because I like doing it. I'm well paid for it. I get far too much adulation compared with what it's worth.
I don't like rules.
Really, ambition has gone. I look for things that tickle my fancy. You begin to see the end of life on the horizon. You think, 'It's not going on forever, this.' Let's make the most of what time I have left.
Peter Brook's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' I remember seeing. That was pretty early on. And suddenly, I realized how theatrical Shakespeare is, how alive, how wonderful it is when it's opened up by a great director and a great company.
I wanted to become an actor because I wanted to become a gypsy. I wanted to live the gypsy life!
I've always tended to play people who relish playing against the rules.
He's a man who... well, one of the great things about Shakespeare is that his characters are inconsistent, and that's something I think makes him a writer above most writers because inconsistency is what we, as people, are full of. We maybe don't see it in ourselves too often, but we are inconsistent.
Mathematicians are always playing tricks on each other. They're always pulling jokes on each other.
My feeling, of course, is that it's ludicrous to try to prove God's existence by science. God has nothing to do with science. God has all to do with soul, and who can explain that?
I keep working with fairly inexperienced directors. You know, if you have a good crew, a good cameraman, you know, I know what I'm doing. If the actors know what they're doing, we can all pull together, and it works.
I've never disliked a character I've played. I've always tried to find the humanity and the reasons for what he does.
It was a better time to be a young actor when I started out. There was a repertory system where you could go and practise.
Civility, politeness, it's like a cement in a society: binds it together. And when we lose it, then I think we all feel lesser and slightly dirty because of it.
I wouldn't call myself a method actor, but I have my own method. I do my own research. I come up with a background for the character. I'm not a club man. I don't like isms. I've never really studied Stanislavski.
No, I don't believe in hard work. If something is hard, leave it. Let it come to you. Let it happen.
I don't mind getting older. I'm enjoying not having that raging ambition I've had all my life.
I don't watch a lot of television. I try to watch all the good movies, but I've got about twenty of these television series that I should be watching. I haven't seen 'The Wire.' I haven't seen 'Mad Men.' I haven't seen Kevin's thing. What's that called? 'House of Cards.' I hear it's wonderful.
The film business has changed hugely. You seem to spend about 30 per cent of the time producing the films and 70 per cent talking about it.
At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
'Lolita' was a great wound in the side for me. I stuck my neck out maybe further than I should have and castigated the studio for not getting behind it.
I believe inanimate objects have a spirit.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
There are wonderful things happening all around the world. From Nova Scotia to Kerala, Bristol to Melbourne, and even in the Philippines, zero waste is on the agenda. I think what's particularly inspiring is when communities don't wait to be told what to do but just go ahead and do it.
So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine.
I have played characters where I haven't been absorbed - you know, what I call a typical film leading man role where you just have to look gorgeous and be attractive and charming. It bores me. I like a bit of dirt, a bit of sand in the oyster.
Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.
Paris Hilton, that's very interesting what she did. I've never done that. I haven't really sort of ever got into that. As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old don't have the energy I can remember how life used to be.
What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.
So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.
Now in my theater training I showed no aptitude at all.
My next step must be to go to drama school. Well, I get into drama school, so I did that.
My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.
I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.
I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me.