Top 50 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Sturridge

In England, theater auditions are gentler experiences. You sit down with the director and talk about the play.

I like to cook and go to Whole Foods.

If a film is being made by an intelligent director, they're going to cast the right guy.

I literally do not understand how New Yorkers deal with summer.

I always think that period between the ages of 18 and 24 is such a bizarre stage, and the two people at either end are always very different.

I'm not a very good actor.

I spend the majority of my life not acting.

'American Buffalo' is special. I can't wait to fight to make an audience feel about it as I do.

There I am, watching Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favourite actors in the world, walk into the room dressed up as Father Christmas, being hilarious, and I'm suddenly thinking, 'Where am I?'

I didn't have any idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.

There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.

I've definitely been obsessed with a couple of girls. They didn't work out.

To be an English person in my 20s, doing a Broadway show - it's one of the mountains I wanted to climb.

If they're a friend, they stick with you through the tough stuff.

The phrase 'dream career' sounds pretty stupid.

Some people are defined by what they do.

I felt that my decisions, whether good or bad, would always be supported by my parents, because I was loved and respected.

It's not often talked about what a wonderful feeling it is to see someone that you care about love and be loved.

Mental health is such a complex thing and so difficult to diagnose. What is a mental problem? Who does have mental problems? What's the difference between mental problems and depression and sadness?

I'm drawn to people rather than mediums - directors, writers, actors.

So many things I thought I was doing have fallen apart. Until I've finished filming, I don't believe I have the job.

I shouldn't be right for every role, because I'm not.

I don't think I could do a superhero movie. I'm just not really that type of guy.

I write constantly about everything.

As children, my siblings and I were actively discouraged from acting. I have no memories of going on set with my parents - aside from 'Gulliver's Travels.'

I left school early in my last year before I took my A-levels. I wasn't expelled. It was just a mutual understanding. I wasn't interested in going to school and they said, 'You're not turning up,' so we severed ties. Both sides appreciated it.

My core group of friends are all from when I was a kid.

Basically, I was a very serious film fan. I watched a lot of cinema and contemporary and European film.

The first word that always came into my head with Henry VI was 'empathy.' He doesn't have a barrier between what other people feel and what he feels.

I wasn't a child actor. It was just three weeks of my life when I was eight.

I don't have a set way of preparing for something. You just have to take it seriously.

My baby pukes on me. It's life. It's very much a normal life.

'1984' is terrifyingly relevant. It generates a political conversation, but it's an exciting piece of theatre. Every day, there are things to be spawned from Orwell's mind, whether it's in England or America, terrorist-related or government-related.

I don't have a general archetypal platonic shadow, 'acting' concept about it.

I found that the more I'd done Shakespeare, and the more I trusted my instincts and applied the same rules you would apply to any scene, the closer I got to how it's meant to be acted.

Even the way Mamet describes silences within his plays is different. There are pauses; there are pauses within parentheses; there are pauses before dialogue; there are pauses in the spaces between the dialogue - there's this extraordinary vocabulary of silence which is all there on the page, mapped out.

As a Shakespeare character, if you can persuade someone in a sentence or a speech, you've got it right.

Scary things are good, aren't they?

There are few things that are more revealing about someone than the way that they talk about a piece of literature or a play. You very quickly come to have a much deeper understanding of someone than you would if you just mingled together in a pub saying, 'All right, how are you?'

The most important thing is, whatever you do decide to choose, take it seriously and do your best.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people.

My career may look bizarre to some, but I have very strong reasons for doing every single job I've done.

If I'd been a parent to myself, I would have been scared because I was only ever interested in my own thoughts.

I'm not afraid of not working.

I'd go as far as it takes. There's never too far. You do what you have to do for your girl.

I dont think I could do a superhero movie. Im just not really that type of guy.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.

That sounds stupid, but in most films that take six months, you're actually spending four weeks to do a fight scene.

I don't talk about my friends behind their back.

You know that scene at the beginning (of 'Pirate Radio') where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That's genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I'd hadn't seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, 'Take him a cup of tea.' So that's what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.