Actors From England

"I definitely think it has been an ongoing thought, which is ‘don’t lose yourself.’ I’ve seen so many people come before me and lose themselves, and I’ve had friends that I’ve grown up with that aren’t friends of mine anymore because they’ve lost themselves to this business, and I just am really, really keen to focus on what make me happy which is my family, my friends, my carpentry, my golf, the charity my mom runs, that is the stuff that makes me really happy and that is the stuff I should protect."

"I was becoming a problem. I was just obsessed with it, and I was obsessed to find out what people were saying and how people, what they thought about me. So I decided to make an announcement, which we unfortunately have to do, and say I’m taking a break from social media. And I tried to position myself and say I’m taking a break from social media because I feel like my mental health will benefit from it."

"I was really, really struggling and I started to really worry that maybe I had an alcohol problem. So I decided that I would wait until my birthday, which is June 1. I said to myself, 'If I can do six months without alcohol, then I can prove to myself that I don't have a problem.' And by the time I got to June 1, I was the happiest I've ever been in my life."

"For me, when it comes to looking for the next job, it’s about the message, and that is the same thing for Spider-Man."

"I really am a massive fan of making movies, but I really do not like Hollywood. It is not for me. The business really scares me. I understand that I’m a part of that business and I enjoy my kind of interactions with it, but that said, I am always looking for ways to kind of remove myself from it to kind of just live as normal a life as possible."

"I hope that people will feel educated about the powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive."

"Whenever I break down a character, the first thing I do is I’ll pick out the moments that I relate to with the character. I build on that. That’s how I make a character that is true to myself while representing different things."

"Mental health is a slightly more complicated subject because you can’t see it, and the pain is internal. So, to try and build a platform that has more compassion, that has more sympathy and more understanding to the internal struggles that many people are going through on a daily basis, is a really wonderful thing that I think we’ve achieved with the show, and I’m hoping that the general public will pick up on that message."

"If I seek anyone’s approval, it would be my parents. That would be the highest level of achievement."

"I’m no stranger to hard work. I’ve lived by the idea that hard work is good work."

"As an actor, your face is your superpower. If you take that away, and put someone in a mask, it’s really difficult to emote. Having done that for maybe eight years has given me a great sense of confidence in my physicality."

"If you were to break up with that person, people will have their own opinions as to why you broke up or whose fault it was. And me being a famous person and having people that love me around the world, if I were to break up with a poor girl, they might think it was her fault. And I wouldn’t want that pressure to be on someone because of me."

"At first I thought it was really funny, but the warning bells went off when I saw the first publicity poster for it. It was a picture of me with one of the minstrels and I'm wiping the black off his face and he's pretending to wipe the black off my face."

"In retrospect you look back and think, "Why didn't anybody say anything?" My brother Seymour, who's incredibly militant, used to make these jokes about storming on stage in a black beret and black gloves."

"Robert Luff was a powerful, articulate businessman, bald-headed, very smart, about 50 to 60 years old, and he had all these shows on, all over Britain, including The Black and White Minstrel Show, which at that stage was making him a fortune."

"Powell's offering us £1,000 to go home. I'll take the money: the train fare's only 10 quid from here to Dudley."

"Traditionally, television audiences have always been massively white, because it tends to be organisations such as the British Legion who apply for tickets, and black people have never felt as though they belonged in clubs like that. It was only when I went along to the BBC ticket unit and suggested that my stuff might appeal to people who hang out in social clubs in Brixton and Willesden that anyone thought about the imbalance. It wasn't particularly racist — it just hadn't occurred to anyone before."

"Trusting the state doesn't make it more trustworthy."

"Once a line of succession becomes open to different interpretations, it has ceased to function."

"The fine constitutional principles we have inherited from Magna Carta and parliament started off as the mere rhetorical perfume the barons doused themselves in to cover the stench of their own treachery. ... Fondness may be a more appropriate thing to feel about them than pride."

"Dying was by far the most astute and successful thing King John did in his entire reign."

"I doubt religion is responsible for as much death as is claimed. Some people love to fight and steal and dominate – that's the key. There are arseholes among us and, given half a chance, they're going to start some sort of trouble out of ruthless self-interest or bloodlust or both. The prevailing ethos of any surrounding society is almost always that you're not supposed to kill people without a good reason, or at least some sort of reason. But the arseholes are clever, so they come up with reasons. To deeply religious societies, religious differences sound like a very convincing reason to kill people. But that doesn't mean the killing wouldn't have been happening anyway."

"The world has never been fair, and cannot be made fair, and claims that it can are foolish or dishonest. It can be made fairer and attempts to make it less fair can be resisted. Optimistic realists seek improvement, not perfection."

"Their certainty that they were right is worth remembering because it means there's probably stuff we're certain is right that future ages will correctly judge to be monstrous. The fact that everybody is convinced of something is no guarantee that it isn't evil horseshit."

"Ever since the days of old the Navy's ruled the waves. For years they've told the world that Britain's never shall be slaves. The Navy still remembers and you'll often hear them say What Nelson told Napoleon upon Trafalgar day:"It serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, it jolly well serves you right. It serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, you might have been sitting tight You might have been in Civvy Street instead of in the fight But it serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, it jolly well serves you right""

"[...] I try to remind myself every day how lucky I am to have my life. A life where love, family, and friendship are at the forefront. It's not lost on me that the importance of these is one of the great lessons of the Harry Potter stories. The realization of this is what makes me a very rich man indeed."

"[About finding work in Los Angeles:] Some doors were open to me. An LA agency accepted me as their client. They took me to lunch at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and took great pride in telling me that this was where the film Pretty Woman had been filmed. I nodded politely but didn't tell them I had never seen Pretty Woman. I felt out of place. A kid from Surrey being wined and dined at one of Hollywood's most exclusive and fashionable spots. Between you and me, I would have preferred a box of chicken nuggets."

"If you tell a person he's great enough times he'll start to believe it. If you blow enough smoke up someone's arse, sooner or later they will start breathing it in. It's almost inevitable. [...] I acted the way I was treated. For a while it was lots of fun, but only for a while. The gleam soon began to tarnish. I never knew I wanted this kind of life, and as time passed, an uncomfortable truth quietly presented itself to me. I didn't want it. Perhaps it sounds ungrateful, I don't mean it to. I was in a lucky and privileged position, but there was something inauthentic about the life I was leading."

"[...] Just because the camera isn't pointing at you, it doesn't mean you don't have to act. In fact, your acting off-camera can sometimes be as important as your acting on-camera. Your reactions, your eye line, and your dialogue are ballast for whoever is on camera at the time."

"[About child visitors to the Harry Potter set:] None of our visitors were that interested in meeting Daniel, Rupert, Emma, or for that matter, me. They wanted to meet the characters. They wanted to put on Harry's glasses, to get a high five from Ron, or a cuddle from Hermione. And since Daniel, Rupert, and Emma were so similar in real life to their idea of the characters, they never disappointed. It was different for us Slytherins. I might have got the role of Draco in part for the similarities between us, but I like to think that I was not so Draco-esque that I'd be unpleasant to a group of nervous excited youngsters. [...] [But] Draco being a nice bloke was as anathema to them as Ron being a dickhead. I didn't quite know how to process it. [...] I'd learn, throughout the years progressed, that some people find it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Between fantasy and reality. Sometimes that can be trying. [...]"

"[...] Certain fans had difficulties distinguishing between Tom, the actor, and Draco, the character. Understandable in five-year-old, but perhaps a little harder to process in someone older. [...] In a way, the tendency some people have to conflate the character and the actor is a compliment. I don't want, in any way, to overstate my contribution to the world of Harry Potter and the effect the phenomenon has had on people's lives. If I hadn't turned up to audition that day, somebody else would have had the part and they would have done it well. The whole project would have been largely the same. But there is some gratification in knowing that my performance crystallized people's notion of the character. Even if it meant they occasionally mistook fantasy for reality."

"[About auditioning for parts after Harry Potter:] As a kid, I had auditioned for a hundred different projects before Potter came along. I had grown quite used to being told "no" back then. Now I was going to have to get used to it again."

"An audience can go back and watch a film any number of times they want. It's always there for them. For the cast and crew, the relationship with a film is more complex. The magic is in the making, and that process is a discrete unit of time in the past. You can reflect on that unit of time, you can be proud of it, but you can't revisit it."

"[About on-set tutoring:] It's hard to be the class clown in a class of one."

"[About acting:] An actor brings something of themselves to a part, working with elements of his or her own life, and fashioning them into something different. I'm not Draco. Draco is not me. But the dividing line is not black and white. It's painted in shades of grey."

"chapter 11"

"[About difficulties part of normal life:] They were all parts of the regular rough and tumble of a normal childhood. At the very least, they were not part of the cloistered upbringing I could have easily have had forced upon me. I would have been a very different person if I hadn't been given the opportunity to experience the ups and downs of a normal life alongside the madness of being part of Harry Potter. At is was, I had the best of both worlds."

"chapter 14"

"[About auditions:] I would like to say it gets easier. Truthfully, it doesn't. But I developed a strange kind of addiction to the process. Before each audition, I would stand outside the room and my nervous brain would try to enumerate all the reasons why I really didn't have to be there. Why I should just walk away. But afterwards, the relief of having done it was like nothing else. No matter how good or bad the audition was, the ecstatic adrenaline rush gave me a unique buzz. I might be back at square one in the acting world, but I was getting a kick out of it."

"Nowhere on earth has been better at covering up racism in my opinion than Great Britain. The thing I like about living in America is that racism comes at you head on. In the UK it sneaks up behind you."

"I like to stay busy and that’s partly why I produce and I’m now directing. I just love storytelling, and as an actor, you can often feel like a cog in a wheel. I don’t want to be a cog in a wheel. I want to be the wheel. In fact, I’d rather own the whole bicycle."

"To be a human being is to have to come to terms with the fact that your time here is finite. Shows that heighten that fact all speak to the reality of our own existence—and how high the stakes become as a result."

"Britain is in a right mess, and I'm thinking of quitting. The scene in South Africa is great, just great."

"I want to leave England because I'm not going to be messed around by Communists and left-wing socialists. South Africa is a beautiful country ... It is an organised country, organised by English people."

"[Following on from the Telegraph quotation above] It's a wonderful place to work in and I'm seriously thinking of going back for good. We played to segregated audiences throughout the tour and experienced no racial difficulties at all."

"Once the decision had been made, once I decided to stop [drinking], it was easy—except for the … three days of unpleasantness, of—well, of having things crawl all over me and hallucinating. … One of the worst things was not being able to remember if I'd slept or not, whether I was dreaming, or whether I was awake. I didn't know."

"There was one occasion when John Cleese and myself actually felt guilty about laughing at something we were writing, because it was in incredibly bad taste. So bad was the taste that we just couldn't help laughing at it. It concerned a gentleman walking into … an undertaker's premises with his dead mother in a sack. And from there it got worse."

"John rings. He’s been away in the country for the weekend. Has just returned to find a message that Graham has had a nervous breakdown."

"[My parents] came to grips with the drinking … much more easily, I think, than [with my sexuality]. Yes. But, things are rather better now than in those days, of course. It was some time ago. And now, even the Church of England, I think, regards a homosexual as merely being handicapped."

"The very first day of filming of The Holy Grail, in fact, we were halfway up a mountainside in Glen Coe, and I hadn't gotten my daily dose, and it was seven o'clock in the morning that we left the hotel. The bar wasn't open; I hadn't realised this, and hadn't gotten anything prepared the night before that I should have if I'd researched my drinking properly. And so I had DTs on the mountainside while having to try and remember lines and (uh) stand up. … It was then that I decided next time that I do a job like this I'm going to be clean for it. It's not fair to the other chaps in the group, it's not fair to me, it's not fair to what I've written, and it's very stupid."