Top 1200 British Actors Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

About California... "I thought it was an appalling place. Then I went through a period of being amused by it. Now it's sort of both. Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.

I work for the British people. I do not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.

They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.

Even in terms of the technical stuff there's a very traditional British flavor that comes out. Our characters are influenced by our culture so there's definitely something unique about British wrestlers in the U.S.

I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.

My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade.

I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.

I love the British public and the British fans; they are true boxing fans. If you get them on your side, you can go right to the end and achieve anything in life.

One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.

Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.

It does seem to me that the British in particular, British horticultural literature and television programmes, focus a huge amount on how we garden and hardly at all on why we garden.

There's not a lot of talking between actors - either between actors or between actors and directors. People think that they sit in rooms and talk about psychology and motivations. I don't think that happens much.

My entire act is through and through British. I reference everything British.

I feel so much more connected with my Asian side than I do with my British side - of course, I'm proud of my British side.

Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.

Actors, I think, are all the same. Both Korean actors and American actors are all very sensitive people, and they are all curious to know what the director thinks of them and how they are evaluated, and they try to satisfy the director. And they like it if you listen carefully to their opinions and accept them.

It seems appropriate that the author of '1984' was a British citizen. George Orwell must have seen how easily the great British public's lamb-like disposition toward its leaders could be exploited to create a police state.

There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.

The interesting thing with child actors is that kids are natural actors. They're wonderful actors, and most kids are acting all the time. They're imagining they're out in the yard playing. They're imagining that things happened, and they can get very vivid.

You work with every actor differently. It's like if you're a mother, if you have children, some children need more discipline. Other children you back off of a little bit and let them be. It's the same way with actors. Some actors need a lot of hand holding. Other actors like to be let be and you let them go. Some actors like to be nudged just a little bit. Some actors don't mind line readings.

No British TV company could ever make a series like 'The West Wing' about British politics. It would beggar credibility. No one could write it with a straight face, or perform it without giggling.

Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British.

There's two types of character actors. There's character actors who play all different characters. Or there's actors who always play the same part; they're just a bit funny-looking.

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

I feel the Conservatives are doing really well both in attracting votes from British Indians and also having successful British Indians in the party.

Most actors and actresses are performative as people. It goes part and parcel with the profession and New York actors who are out of work, or actors anywhere out of work, are manic because you never know when the next job is going to come.

There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.

There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don't. Two, when we have a "World Championship", we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.

There are so many stage actors on TV but you wouldn't know they were stage actors. And film and TV actors are going to the stage as well, so the crossover is great now.

[Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?

I know too much about British politics to comment on British politics.

It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title 'Sir' has sustained heavy damage.

I watch a lot of British television so people like Olivia Coleman, Sheridan Smith and Jodie Comer continue to inspire me with their versatility and story telling in British television.

No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.

I know in Britain with 'Doctor Who' all the classic actors, and the people who you'd really want to, work on the show. I like that the fact that 'Torchwood' has actors that want to be involved from the stage. It has raised our game, and I'm just happy for good actors who want to be in sci-fi shows who love the genre.

When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland.

No, I'm very patriotic. I'm very British and I'm very pro-British, but that in no way means you therefore exterminate anybody else you meet who doesn't come from Britain!

As a British rider, it's a privilege to be able to compete on home roads. The British public have really taken to cycling, and you can see that when the race goes through different towns: the community really gets behind it.

I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid, I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched Robin Hood, Star Wars, Highlander and The Three Musketeers, and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.

The Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh... I... oh... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

Audiences seem to have a limitless appetite for vampires and for fantasy in general. Unlike many other British actors, I haven't been building up my pension appearing in films like 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter,' but fantasy has now got a grip on me. I am also appearing in 'Game of Thrones' as the head of the House of Lannister.

I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.

Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.

The tried and tested becomes very boring. There's no way that the British equivalent of a Bryan Cranston would get the lead in a British equivalent of 'Breaking Bad.'

It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands.

I am not in favour of the takeover of excellent and strategically important British companies by struggling foreign firms whose actions are fuelled by tax avoidance, and who want to asset-strip the intellectual property of the British company and then dismember it.

'A great British icon' is not the phrase I'd use about anybody, but there are people you admire that happen to be British. I think it's a phrase that gets attached to anyone who's been around long enough to become overfamiliar.

All the best British groups were inspired by black American music. With The Beatles, it was Motown and the blues. With me, it was a mixture of British styles and the more sophisticated Seventies soul of Barry White and Marvin Gaye.

I've heard Jerry do mini concerts while driving, especially when the music of The Beatles or a handful of other 'British Invasion' bands aired. Hearing Jerry Lawler sing with a British accent is quite an experience.

I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid. I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched 'Robin Hood,' 'Star Wars,' 'Highlander' and 'The Three Musketeers,' and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.

Every industry, there are rogues and bad actors. There could be rogues and bad actors in journalism. Rogues and bad actors in medicine. Rogues and bad actors in the legal community.

I decided I would open this little actors' workshop I always told actors to look for. That gave me something to do on Wednesday nights, and after about a year of that, I realized that some of the things I was saying to actors probably had broader application. I ran into a magazine called 'Speakers For Free.'

Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.

British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country.

Children of Men' reinforces what few would doubt, but which British cinema would seldom lead you to suspect: the British landscape bristles with cinematic potential.

I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.

For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it's got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema - so they can be transported to a different world.

I got a chance to work with so many stalwarts from British cinema. Judi Dench, of course, who is a legend. Then there was my director Stephen Frears. He is the man who made some of British cinema's salient trendsetters.