A Quote by Paul Scofield

It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been.

Paul Scofield

Quote Topics

Always Back Been Difficult Gone King Lear Leave Macbeth Once Same Self Want Yourself

Quote Author

Paul Scofield
British - Actor
January 21, 1922 - March 19, 2008

I want to play King Lear, Macbeth, Benedict, Coriolanus. I wouldn't mind doing Hamlet again. Well, I'm a little old. Perhaps I can rub Vaseline on the audience's eyes.

Roger Rees

King Lear by William Shakespeare frightens me. I've never done King Lear, I guess partially because my father dwindled into dementia in his last years and King Lear is such an accurate portrayal of a father figure suffering from dementia - the play was almost intolerable for me.

Gregory Doran

I guess if they ever do a remake of 'Sophie's Choice,' I could play the Meryl Streep part. I've got to work on my Polish accent. Maybe I'll be the definitive King Lear one day. You know, if they ever feel that King Lear should be more Jewy.

Gilbert Gottfried

What does Macbeth want? What does Shakespeare want? What does Othello want? What does James want? What does Arthur Miller want when he wrote? Those things you incorporate and create in the character, and then you step back and you create it. It always must begin with the point of truth within yourself.

John Kani

I want to be evil! I did play Lady Macbeth on stage to Alec Baldwin's Macbeth back in New York in 1998. But I've played a lot of characters who are so righteous and understanding. I don't want to be a goody-goody two-shoes all the time.

Angela Bassett

King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare - or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.

Paul Scofield

My travels have always been of the same kind. No matter where I've gone or why I've gone there it ends up that I never see anything. Becoming a movie star is living on a merry-go-round. When you travel you take the merry-go-round with you. You don't see natives or new scenery. You see chiefly the same press agents, the same sort of interviewers, and the same picture layouts of yourself.

Marilyn Monroe

One time, I had to do Edgar in 'King Lear' and Owl in 'Winnie the Pooh' on the same day.

Jonathan Pryce

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

Ian Mckellen

I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.

Damien Chazelle

I don't trust anyone who hasn't been self-destructiv e in some way, and who hasn't gone through some sort of bout of self-loathing. You've got to bang yourself around a bit to know yourself.

Johnny Depp

I feel like I've been on EastEnders all my life and now I'm playing King Lear.

Ian Holloway

Once humankind has been some place and found it entrancing, they always go back, I think in the history of the human race, the moon has been the first place we've gone to and said, 'OK, we don't need to go back there again.

Tom Hanks

Hamlet is to Macbeth somewhat as the Ghost is to the Witches. Revenge, or ambition, in its inception may have a lofty, even a majestic countenance, but when it has "coupled hell" and become crime, it grows increasingly foul and sordid. We love and admire Hamlet so much at the beginning that we tend to forget that he is as hot-blooded as the earlier Macbeth when he kills Polonius and the King, cold-blooded as the later Macbeth or Iago when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death.