Actors From England

"I happened to be seeing my doctor the next day for a check-up so while he was down there I said, 'By the way, my wife and I have had a little disagreement, I am circumcised, aren't I?' He took a closer look and said, 'Not! I am Jewish, and definitely know the difference!'"

"It's part of the job to mythologise the experience, and you don't have to do that with this one. It's as easy as breath to talk about this one."

"There have enough people who been vilified in American politics to have American villains now, but it is a very American thing, to have British villains."

"I'm good at being self-critical. I've also been told that I'm good at taking up new sports. I'm a fast learner and pick things up very quickly."

"If you’re talking about playing an iconic superhero, then there’s a huge pressure that comes with the expectations of what you do with that material, even though it’s fictitious. Obviously, if it’s someone that’s real, there’s the pressures and the rightful kind of responsibility of protecting a legacy. But they’re very, very different kinds of pressures. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to do a good job."

"If I get something wrong or if I'm late it's an act of wilfulness. This is not the case; it's disorganisation on my part."

"I was aged about five and I went to see Oliver!. I remember announcing to my family something very cliched like, I want to be up there one day."

"I have three older sisters who definitely encouraged me to lark around. I’m pretty sure they spent their Sundays dressing me up (in suitably androgynous clothing) and forcing me to sing Sister Sledge. They were my heroes growing up."

"I've never gone in as the overdog, and that's liberating and I don't want that to ever change. I just want to allow my own experiences to come through."

"He’s the nicest person you could ever hope to meet. But when he acts, he can have an edge, which can feel dangerous in a great way. An unpredictability."

"There’s a lot of pressure on romance, I think, because you have to be so truthful. But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You just want to find the truth in everything."

"But with every job I’ve done that I’ve really enjoyed, I’ve never really ‘seen’ myself in it. If you can see yourself in something, you’ve probably already worked out your performance or the why. But if there’s that friction, then it means you’re going to come up with something new."

"It's thrilling from beginning to end. And the last scene of Act I (which is now two guys) will completely shatter you, as well as it being one of the funniest scenes on record. All due to [Jonathan Bailey], the guy who plays Jamie, the Amy-equivalent."

"Leadership is about authenticity and transparency. And being there. Being there as much as you can. There's a fearlessness to it."

"When you’re working with a genre like romance, which is about something fundamental which connects all humans, it’s so important that we can allow everyone to see themselves in that story, and that wasn't necessarily there for me growing up."

"[I loved] the romance genre being given this platform — it’s always been seen as quite a lightweight literature. Of course, it’s fluffy because it’s accessible and it’s hopefully something that you can bathe in. But at the same time, it can really tap into very human, very private and very high-stakes human experiences."

"Jonny operates at a different voltage. He's a meteorite of fun with an incredible amount of energy and playfulness. Smoldering at one turn and then utterly innocent at the next, but all the time playing with this sense of untapped danger. That is the quality I love most about Jonny as a person and as a performer: his danger."

"Of course I thought that in order to be happy I needed to be straight. I reached a point where I thought, Fuck this, I'd much prefer to hold my boyfriend's hand in public or be able to put my own face picture on Tinder and not be so concerned about that than getting a part."

"Any actor who thinks they're a sex symbol? Cringe."

"It is good to see a romance story getting the respect it deserves — people can relate because everyone gets the chance to fall in love at some point. Hopefully."

"I knew that I wanted to be visible about my sexuality, because in all the territories that Netflix goes out in, there might be a boy somewhere that goes, “Wait, what?” Which is what I didn’t have when I was young. All I know is that I’m happy to keep working really hard and if there are opportunities for representation, and to make that point, then that’s something I’ll always strive to do."

"In 20 years, you don't want to be famous. You want a sustained career."

"I think there’s something incredibly sexy about consent generally."

"He's quite open as a human being. I love him."

"What I try to look for is something that a general audience can relate to, to have an investment in these extraordinary people who achieve extraordinary things. That’s an easy task for an actor, to humanize these incredible machines of ideas that some of these people are. It’s not always easy, but that’s the challenge, and that’s what I’ve enjoyed doing. I’m very lucky."

"Everything flat lines in my brain, to be honest. I don’t think much at all. I just sit there going, “Holy s**t!” It’s very rare that you stop to look back. What I’m trying to do, all the time, whatever I’m doing, is being in that present moment. I seem to have an appetite for life and I seem to have an appetite for work, so I keep going. I don’t really look back. So, to do that is a novel experience and quite a surreal one."

"Theatre is all about people. You can love a play and character and can be the right person to tell that story. But if you don’t click with the other people in the play, it won’t work."

"Situations where what I say echoes much further than what is healthy. I would love to just have the work do the talking. We’re in positions where people ask us questions; they want to know about more than just the work. And it can go into areas where I’ve completely shot my mouth off, whether it’s too much about my private life or being too opinionated about things in the world. I think the better thing to do—I’ve learned this from people far wiser than me—is to do very good, quiet work behind closed doors."

"If I’m playing someone who’s smart, suddenly every character I’ve played is smart. If I’m playing a bad guy, every character is a bad guy. I suppose it’s that thing where people want to see a through-line to understand you. I mean, you know, I have played pretty ordinary people too."

"I’ve never doubted I would have children. It’s not something I’ve ever wavered on."

"Oh my God, are you kidding? I’m not saying for one second that I’ve been this sort of candyfloss gay who has cartwheeled around London. It’s completely brutal. And at moments really confusing. [But] there’s absolutely no way I’m not going to be visibly out. Even four years ago there wasn’t any actor in my peer group, really, that you could see playing straight roles."

"It's time to start playing the smallest violin in the world for me right now. I was very lucky because I had other people's pets. I was like an uncle or godparent. You get all the benefits without any of the trauma. We had animals at school that we tended to, I don't know how they survived. I didn't go through the trauma of seeing them as babies and then going through their life cycle with them and the inevitable end. I love, love, love, love, love dogs. Cats, on the other hand... Don't ever do a film with them. They just wander around looking really unimpressed with everything. I love them, but working with them is really tough."

"I was very, very into techno for a long time. That was my bag at uni. I went clubbing a lot and all sorts of nonsense ensued. Havok on a Friday was my favourite night because I just loved dancing."

"You know, I’m not a fan of horror. I’m a fan of some of those films, but I’m not a fan in the sense I find it very difficult to watch them. I’m very suggestible and gullible and I buy into what I’m watching and it just haunts me for too long afterwards. It just scares me for longer than the moment in the film. I don’t really like living a life in horror or terrors, other than that in the real world without my imagination creating more. Horror is not my genre go-to. It’s not my genre go to."

"I would say in compound sense of what little I know is it’s definitely darker in tone, and in terms of advice for taking kids of a certain age, it’s going to be prohibitive for certain people of a certain age because it is scary."

"I don’t know if watching your own work is a good or bad thing. I don’t know how much I learn from it. Each individual circumstance holds its own world of singularities and peculiarities. But among that, you can go: “Oh yeah, I remember that was what I tried to do.” Sometimes it doesn’t fit with the cast or the energy of the scene or the beat of another character. But to sit down in the audience and go: “Oh my God, I think that was what I intended”, was great."

"It is a private matter [sexuality], but if there are opportunities to say something . . . I wonder if, if it would be beneficial to someone else, that responsibility is on you. It’s complicated."

"LGBT people are not that different - we're just as anxious and just as flawed and just as desperate to fall in love as everyone else."

"Theatre has often saved the day for me and that’s why I’ll forever think I’m a theatre actor more than anything else."

"It’s about redressing the balance of access to roles. There just aren’t that many gay roles, so when straight actors go to take that space up, it’s eliminating the chance for other [gay actors]. We know there has been a history of needing to be closeted to succeed and be famous, especially in acting. And the idea of not being able to believe heterosexual relations and narrative, if you know one of the actors is gay… everyone should be able to play absolutely everything. But let’s blow away all the cobwebs, and one of the hang-ups and shadows of the past is that we need to be a lot more open to the idea of sexes playing different sides. There have been amazing performances by straight people playing gay and by gay people playing straight."

"Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated."

"Who knows? He died, presumably. I have no more idea than anyone else, but that’s the point. That’s why it’s so clever."

"Nuclear war is everyone’s problem, it’s not just country to country. It’s a worldwide problem, we all share it, and that’s why it’s so frightening now. Since Threads was made I’m sure there have been advances in what nuclear weapons can do."

"Of course, my character goes missing halfway through the film, so half of the filming I wasn’t privy to. [...] You want to know what happens, but you’re not told. I suppose the message is that’s exactly what it’ll be like — nothing will be tied up nicely because people will disappear."

"I believe you should never give people what they want. Give them something a little more than what they want and that way they grow up."

"It would have been disaster if we hadn't been so desperately in love with each other."

"I want to speak up about representation in the industry because it is important. My experience has been hard coming up. I was naive and didn't know about the systemic stuff that still continues today and having experienced it, I know there's a need for change and I want to be a voice for that."

"On the effects of school exclusions as spoken on ITV News london, , October 25, 2019."

"On combatting the inequalities in the system, as quoted by My london, , October 28, 2020."

"You have people like Marcus Rashford who is part of our generation. He's seen a need and is using his voice. A lot of us are rising up to create change for ourselves.""