singers-from-england

"I never really had any aspirations to be an actor when I was young. I wanted to play the piano in a bar, to be the old dude with a whisky glass, all dishevelled."

"If I do decide one day to stop acting, I just hate the idea of people going: 'Oh, did you ever do anything else besides that Twilight thing?'"

"I don't really know how to act, I kind of wanted to somehow make it real, and one of the ways I've always thought makes that a little bit easier is if you shake up your physical state just before action. You end up walking into a scene having a different feeling."

"Peter Hook has had a fractious relationship with New Order over the years, and the two factions have been engaging in legal wrangling over the use of the name. Before that he, of course, was part of Joy Division, playing alongside Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner until Curtis's tragic suicide in 1980. It was with Joy Division where he developed his famous high-note style, claiming that the amp he learnt on was so bad that he could only play high notes in order to hear himself!"

"When it comes to the leader and true soul of Iron Maiden, it's Steve Harris' show. Sure, frontman Bruce Dickinson, or even beloved Eddie, might be "the face" of Iron Maiden, but Harris is the guy who makes the operation run. He’s the band's principal songwriter and one of the slickest, quickest bass players in hard rock and heavy metal history. Known for his "gallop" method of playing the instrument, Harris' work shines on Maiden classics like "The Trooper" and "Run to the Hills." Harris has cited Phil Lynott as one of his many bass influences."

"When it comes to the driving lead force amid the longtime triple-guitar assault within [Iron Maiden], Smith is the king above kings. Complete with his usual headband, Smith is a groover — meaning his playing has a undeniably blues feel to it. While it's never really been about speed with Smith, when it comes to legendary solo work ("Heaven Can Wait", "Powerslave), he continues to bring it at a level that others only wish they could pull off."

"Adrian Smith incorporates all the classic metal guitar player's techniques: alternate picking, legato, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, sweep picking, slide playing and more. What separates him from the rest of the pack is that he uses all of these techniques in a musical context with no exaggeration. He is heavily influenced by blues, so he uses the pentatonic scale a lot, but he also enjoys ripping a fast phrase in a Phyrigian mode from time to time."

"[Murray and Adrian Smith] are the OG’s of the twin axe attack (and thus to blame for inadvertently causing melodic death metal)."

"Rob Halford's operatic voice is one of the most recognizable in all of heavy metal and hard rock."

"Your pride, why should your pride be so restricted? Restricted to a mere fraction of this earth. This earth from which we have all evolved"

"I guess my nipples are nicer to look at."

"Yeah, I love fashion. Love it, love it, love it. I love clothes. I’m a vegan, so I’m really interested now in sustainability and fashion being sustainable. I’m very kind of new to the veganism kind of fashion side, I’ve been a vegan for god… 15 years now or so. I was a vegan before it was cool to be vegan. Old school, you know?"

"It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking In the dark Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops Your heart. You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before You make it You start to freeze as horror looks you right between The eyes You're paralyzed 'Cause this is thriller, thriller night And no one's gonna save you from the beast about to Strike You know it's thriller, thriller night You're fighting for your life inside a killer Thriller tonight."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[...] 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 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."

"[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."

"[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."

"[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."

"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."

"chapter 14"

"[...] 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 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"

"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."

"[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."

"Great artists are the ones who have put their entire selves out there to be adored, humiliated, to be picked at, cherished, all of those things, and haven't shied away from that."

"Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don't know that I'm most people's definition of what a black person is. I'm mixed, yes, but in the world I'm defined as black before I'm defined white. I've never been called white."

"Coming from the U.K., I can think of so many great songs and musical moments that didn't require a belter of a voice; my favorite singer is Kate Bush and she's not a belter, or PJ Harvey... I'm definitely more of an alternative girl."

"There’s a lot more opportunity to be a person of color, to be a woman, and to be at the center of the storytelling."

"you need to be able to step outside yourself, and you don’t necessarily need to have real-life experiences to draw upon."

"As an artist, there's so many categories that you're put into, that there are so many things that I'm about that I've never explored as an artist on film. I don't see myself in so many characters in film."

"Success for me will be where the body of work I’ve done afforded me the opportunity to be as good as I can be, and to explore myself and to see what I’m capable of. People like that share a willingness to be scared and to take chances."

"One of the reasons I didn't ever pursue a career - in the music world if you're black or mixed, you need to be able to belt a song or else you're not a singer, you know?"

"There’s a social attitude toward being fairly accepting of violence, and coupled with the access to guns, in some ways we’re already at a place where in certain communities, gun violence is already rife—and in some ways, because of policy, it’s kind of condoned from the top."

"I can remember being very keen to go to drama school at the age of eight, and practising ballet in my bedroom to Queen soundtracks."

"Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly."

"I'm eternally grateful for the Irish side of me. That's where I got my sense of comedy and whimsy. As for the English half — that's my reserved side ... But put me onstage, and the Irish comes out. The combination makes a good mix for acting."

"I was a wife and a mother, and I was completely fulfilled. But my husband recognised the signals in me which said "I've been doing enough gardening, I've cooked enough good dinners, I've sat around the house and mooned about what more interior decoration I can get my fingers into." It's a curious thing with actors and actresses, but suddenly the alarm goes off. My husband is a very sensitive person to my moods and he recognised the fact that I had to get on with something. Mame came along out of the blue just at this time. Now isn't that a miracle?"

"I was never going to get to play the girl next door. And I was never going to be groomed to be a glamorous movie star. And I sort of realized that. So I had to make my — make peace with myself on that score."

"Any actress will tell you that evil roles to play are the best. You can go to town, you know? And in that instance, I think that woman had so many layers and so many personas in a sense, she was riveting and so interesting to play. I relish the — having had that opportunity to play that role because I don't think there are many written like that. I consider that she was the Lear among, you know, movie women."

"I went very fast in drama school and ended up working in one of the senior plays. Even just in my first year, I was assigned a role of a lady in waiting in Mary Of Scotland. So they obviously knew that this young person had something. She had a talent. And I sort of felt that, although I didn't get big-headed about it, but I felt it — gave me tremendous confidence."

"The only, let's say, the comfort I took was — and even then, I kind of leant on it — was the fact that I knew that I was an actress and that I could play different roles because I was continuously being offered extraordinary stretches, shall we say, as an actress, to play parts which were way out of my range. However, I would do it. And I managed to just skin by by the skin of my teeth, you know, playing roles where I was much older than I actually was, playing Walter Pidgeon's wife in "If Winter Comes," you know?"

"When I first started Murder, She Wrote, I thought it would last maybe two, three years, you know, or maybe a year if we were lucky. But when it extended and I realized the deep inroads it had made into family life in America, I couldn't stop. So I was sort of trapped — happily trapped — for 12 years with it. And I'm still playing Jessica from time to time and loving it. I wouldn't want to let go of that lady. … She was the sort of woman I like, and therefore, I enjoyed playing her. And being Jessica was second nature to me because she embodied all of the qualities that I like about women. She was valiant and liberal and athletic and exciting and sexy and all kinds of good stuff that women are of a certain age and are not given credit for. So to be able to play that gave me tremendous sort of pleasure, and I'm so glad I've done it."