Steve Coogan
I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.
I used to do stuff at college. I could do voices. I could make some people laugh. I wasn't the class clown, but I knew I had this skill.
I wasn't a naturally confident, extravert, outgoing person.
The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.Collection: Serious
If you got the balls to follow something through, you can end up being the coolest, smartest guy in the room, because you've literally put your ass on the line.Collection: Guy
I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.Collection: Funny
If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.Collection: Rabbits
The important thing is not to be defined by what others think of you.Collection: Thinking
People come up to me in supermarkets and demand humour. And the less amusing I am, the more they piss themselves. So I say, "I'm doing my shopping, mate, OK?" and the guy will be on the floor in hysterics. Quite odd. Eventually I do have to say something funny so I usually go for something pathetic like, "It's a nice place to shop but I wouldn't like to live here!" and they roar again. Wet themselves. I'm lucky though that I am not massively famous, I can get the Tube without much bother. Must be awful being the Beckhams.Collection: Nice
I don't apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don't do shouldn't matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.Collection: War
Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.Collection: Funny
It's like aversion therapy. You keep doing scenes over and over again with three women in the bed with you, and we had to do them all in one week. Three girls would step out and another three girls would step into the bed. It sounds like a fantasy but by the end of it, I just wanted to go for a hike on my own in the north of England, in the hills. Because it became a sort of "be careful what you wish for" kinda thing.Collection: Girl
Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.Collection: Thinking
I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work.Collection: Grateful
Knowing about comedy has helped me with the drama. To see people laugh, it's like there are moments of catharsis in the middle of sadness.Collection: Drama
When it comes to morality, I'd rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.Collection: War
If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater.Collection: Funny
I'm gonna hump ya. Like Deputy Dog... Would hump ya.Collection: Funny
Got my fungal foot powder? Ah, it's a lifesaver, you know. I'd effectively be disabled if it weren't for these.Collection: Funny
Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.Collection: Silly
In my mind God made Adam and Eve, he didn't make Adam and Steve.Collection: Funny
It is not true that sex degrades women... if it is any good.Collection: Sex
It may seem like improv because it flows quite naturally, and a little bit of leeway for improvisation is good, but you have to be judicious with it. So it's good, but sometimes people deify it. You can't improvise your way out of a paper hat.Collection: People
Even if I screw up in my personal life, as long as I'm not destroying myself, I just think, "Okay, I screwed up." I'm not Mother Theresa.Collection: Mother
I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.Collection: Thinking
I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.Collection: Thinking
I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.Collection: Believe
I think there's as much profundity and wisdom in Shakespeare, more so in fact, than those in the Bible.Collection: Thinking
I don't want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don't feel the need to do that.Collection: Needs
If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.Collection: Wind
It's arguably the best newspaper in the world.Collection: Funny
I woke with a start. At first I assumed I'd trumped myself awake again.Collection: Funny
I'm getting older , so I'm quieting down a bit.Collection: Getting Older
Convoy? Michael, you're hanging around with a man who uses a collective term for a single vehicle.Collection: Funny
I'm 47, my girlfriend's 33; she's 14 years younger than me: Back of the net!Collection: Funny
Two fat ladies, 88! Not that you'd find these ladies at a bingo hall, of course... they're altogether a higher class of fat lady.Collection: Funny
When Americans talks about Europeans, they are thinking Britain and the rest of Europe. When we [ Britains] talk about Europeans, we talk about everywhere else.Collection: Thinking
Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.Collection: Looks
The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.Collection: Europe
There were days when we used to say, what was in today's paper is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper.When I became successful, I enjoyed myself a little.Collection: Successful
What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.Collection: Hands
I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.Collection: Conservative
There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.Collection: Dog
All those people who go around saying Life begins at forty, they're notable by their absence. The nerve.Collection: Funny
The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It's a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.Collection: Attitude
Depending on which side of the fence you're on, you could argue that the sexual liberation of the late '60s, led to women being emancipated in some ways. That they found a voice during that time, with feminism. It's complicated.Collection: Voice
When I play myself, I want to be a slightly better person. It just agrees. Everything I play about myself is kind of true, but it's amplified. We all edit, don't we? If you're self-aware, you stop yourself - you know how to behave properly.Collection: Self
I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.Collection: Thinking
All drama teachers are very effusive, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical. Those people don't work in banks and they don't work for pharmaceutical companies. They teach drama, or they may be theatre directors. That's why I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.Collection: Teacher