English Actor Quotes

Daniel Radcliffe

Peter Ustinov

Daniel Day-Lewis

Alec Guinness

Alan Rickman

Jeremy Irons

Ben Kingsley

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive… that's part of the reason I love it.

I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.

I have little patience with anyone who is not self-satisfied. I am always pleased to see my friends, happy to be with my wife and family, but the high spot of every day is when I first catch a glimpse of myself in the shaving mirror.

I was so pleased to be offered Doctor Who. To me kids are the greatest audience - and the greatest critics - in the world.

William Hartnell

You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.

Ralph Richardson

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

Vain empty words / Of honour, glory and immortal fame, / Can these recall the spirit from its place, / Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life? / What tho' your fame with all its thousand trumpets, / Sound o'er the sepulchres, will that awake / The sleeping dead.

Words are like children. The more care you lavish on them, the more they demand.

My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing.

The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.

I would much rather end up a fertiliser under a sunflower which is eventually made into sunflower seed oil so that instead of nibbling me in her prawn cocktail, the pretty girl will rub me on her bristols as she suns herself on a beach in the Caribbean.

Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

As you get older, the more you know, so the more nervous you become. The risks are much bigger.

I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

On his preference of being called 'Sir Ben' instead of 'Mr Kingsley':

It's a small word. It's not long. And it's not difficult to remember.

It came to a point where I had no idea where Picard began and I ended. We completely overlapped. His voice became my voice, and there were other elements of him that became me.

Patrick Stewart

Whatever it is that makes a person charming, it needs to remain a mystery.... Once the charmer is aware of a mannerism or characteristic that others find charming, it ceases to be a mannerism and becomes an affectation. And good Lord, there is nothing less charming than affectations!

As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

I always wait for The Times each morning. I look at the obituary column, and if I'm not in it, I go to work.

You don't retire in this business. You just notice the phone has not rung for 10 years.

Warren Mitchell

In a way, … growing up like this with Harry makes it easier to act in each of the films, because I've been through all the stuff that he's going through, like the hormones, relatively recently. So it's quite fresh in my mind. And then I suppose it's been made easier by the fact I've been playing Harry Potter since I was 12. You get to know the character so well that it makes it easier to act in the long run.

Daniel Radcliffe

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses - fix your bayonets boys - gentlemen, synchronize your watches - in ten seconds time the barrage starts,... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years.

Life isn't fair. Fair is somewhere you go to ride the dodgems and win a goldfish. (from Rush of Blood)

Mark Billingham

Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.

Edward Fox (actor)