A Quote by Jim Broadbent

Occasionally, I've been asked to do American roles, and once or twice I have, but I don't understand Americans. I don't have any real feeling for American culture. — © Jim Broadbent
Occasionally, I've been asked to do American roles, and once or twice I have, but I don't understand Americans. I don't have any real feeling for American culture.
The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans.
Every American wants MORE & MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more & more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.
People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the whole culture and makes it richer and more interesting. I think if we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then we will be in a position where all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger.
You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.
Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.
We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it's] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture.
It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.
I just want to make sure that I'm taking roles that are positive, real, honest reflections of African-Americans because I do think the media can put African-American women in the background. Then, unfortunately, what happens is, subconsciously, our culture begins to assess that as reality.
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
Whether you look at 'Glee' and its normalization of gay identity or you look at the work of Martin Scorsese and the Italian-American community, American culture is able to take these stories, which are seen as marginalized, and just turn them into American stories. And you don't think twice about it.
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.
I've got nothing against any individual American, except that there aren't any. They're always Irish-American, African-American... There's never an American-American you can blame.
My concern is to develop a North American type of anarchism that comes out of the American tradition, or that at least can be communicated to Americans and that takes into consideration that Americans are not any longer people of European background.
I think I would like to see more roles for South Asian performers that are more inclusive and part of the American Diaspora, the American tapestry, perhaps the way that African American and Hispanic roles have developed.
I think there's a pride of what a real American can be. I mean, I'm a transplant, but I've got American kids and an American wife, and when I go back to England I feel more like an American, the way I look at the world, is more from an American perspective at this point. I've traveled every state 30 or 40 times, and have met an amazing array of people, and I have found Americans to be among the most kind and tolerant people I have ever met.
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