Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Eddie Marsan - Page 2

Major film stars tend to do a film and then have a couple of months off. I'm not a major film star; I'm a jobbing actor.

Art is the job of the privileged.

In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time.

You're not going to have something set on a council estate that explores all elements of human existence, the variety of experience inherent in any community.

I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat.

Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from.

I'm very blue collar myself. So it was easy for me to embody that in a sense. It's much harder for me to embody Norrell than it is to embody Terry Donovan.

I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.

When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.

I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there.

My friends I grew up with were so supportive to me. And I'm not the only one who's done well.

Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I'm not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it's as a craftsman.

I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me.

If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do.

I wasn't that hard. I wasn't that tough. I wasn't that funny - I looked like me.

I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.

You can't write a screenplay if you've been doing a zero-hours contract. Which means that the people who write drama, the people who commission dramas, and the people who direct dramas all come from a small circle of society.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me.

I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said: "You know, it's funny, it's when you've got no clothes on, no one recognises you." I said: "What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?"

I think one of the London Film Festival strengths is that it's set in London but it's not about London. It's about the diversity of this city and it's about world cinema. And that's what London is - London is a place where its identity is always in a state of flux. So, this festival celebrates the way in which it is always changing. That's why London is a fascinating place and that's why the film festival is a fascinating film festival.

What I love about the East End is that theres a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.