Quotes

The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

And I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast. (Italian Vogue)

[on his success in playing the two Mr. Darcy roles] I was delighted to become a popular culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.

Forget "trying" to be sexy. That's just gruesome.

[on losing the girl to both Ralph and Joseph Fiennes] If I want my career to go on, I'm going to have to find some more Fiennes brothers! However, any similarity between them basically stops at their last name. I was in no way reminded of Ralph by working with Joe. I got on fantastically with both of them. I have huge admiration for them as actors but I couldn't compare them.

[on his first name] Well it doesn't exactly have a ring to it, does it? It's more the sort of name you'd give to your goldfish for a joke.

I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better or a lot worse, depending on how I want it to look.

The first actor who really blew me away was Paul Scofield in [the movie] A Man for All Seasons (1966). I'd never seen such integrity in acting, and it struck me as a fascinating paradox because acting is artifice. It can be argued to be entirely false. I thought, how can an actor suggest such truth?

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

Every single film since [Pride and Prejudice (1995)] there's been a scene where someone goes, "Well I think you've just killed Mr Darcy". But he is a figure that won't die. He is wandering somewhere. I can't control him. I tried to play with it in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). I've never resented it: if it wasn't for him I might be languishing, but part of me thinks I should do this postmodern thing, change my name by deed poll to Mr Darcy. Then people can come up to me and say, 'But you are not Mr Darcy' which would be different. I dare say it will be my saving grace when the only employment available to me is opening supermarkets dressed in breeches and a wig.

I feel quite strongly about anti-Americanism. I share people's grievances about the current Administration but I remember my father and I watching the Watergate hearings. Here was a country arraigning its own leaders. America has a fantastic history of dissent. (Sept. 2007)

[on the appeal he has to older female fans] I find I'm increasingly lusted after by people beyond pensionable age. I was told of a woman in hospital, diagnosed with high blood pressure, who was told not to watch any more Pride and Prejudice (1995). She was 103.

[on the movie version of Mamma Mia! (2008) in which he stars] If you are the kind of person who always wanted to see middle aged men in tight spandex trying to sing, then this is the film for you.

[on filming Mamma Mia! (2008)] This was quite terrifying, because the guys in this film were really out of their comfort zone with the singing thing. And you know, the first thing we did was to record our songs, because you pre-record before you shoot the film. And then you have to shoot it live, which a lot of it was, and it was the fearsome Benny and Björn of ABBA, and they were notorious hard customers, and they booked me three days in the studio to sing a three-minute song. So my mind was reeling with images of myself, you know, floods of Ambian-fueled tears, while I was being shouted out in Swedish by bearded men. But, fortunately, when I met them, they were friendly. There was something in their friendliness that had a reserve to it. I thought, "I'm going to be friendly as long as I'm not crappy". And then half an hour later, they were actually okay. Pierce Brosnan and Stellan walked in and I looked at their faces, I was staring into a vortex of fear, both of them in spirals. And nothing bonds you more than blind terror really. Within a few more minutes, the three of us were like The Andrews Sisters around the mike, you know.

Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.

Your face is supposed to move if you're going to act. Why on earth would you take a violin and make the strings so that they don't vibrate? Injecting something in to your face so it's paralysed, or cutting bits of it up so that you take any signs of life out of it is catastrophic if you're going to express yourself in any way at all.

[on accepting a Golden Globe Award for The King's Speech (2010)] Right now, this is all that stands between me and a Harley Davidson.

Actually, you know, it is quite extraordinary because life on a film set is inherently infantile. Everything else is taken away to the point where we are helpless. You are picked up at a certain time of day. You are driven to a place not of your choice. You are then given clothes to put on. And then someone does your hair and your face, and again according to someone else's schedule. You are brought your breakfast. Then you are taken to a place where you do your job and you are told where to stand, where to look, and here are the words you are going to say, and they're not yours. And so there is very little that you have in your control, except what happens when you close the bathroom door. It is preposterous. It makes no sense whatsoever, unless it's wonderful. You are always treading that line.

Through my film work, I've tended to represent precisely the kind of Englishman that I'm not - the repressed figure of mythology. It's hard to run into those guys now. I'll give you £100 for every guy with a bowler hat and umbrella you see walking the streets of London who's not going to a fancy dress party. My generation weren't saying, I can't wait to grow up so I can put on a pin-stripe suit and go to an office. They were piercing their ears and learning to play the guitar. If you want to define a modern Englishman, you might as well look at Keith Richards, John Lydon or Ray Winstone, rather than John Major or King Charles III.

[on looking ten years ahead] I always imagined I'd move beyond this rather infantile career choice. By this point I would have become a virtuoso on a musical instrument or written novels or become an astronaut. But I'll probably be doing some version of exactly what I'm doing now.

[on often appearing as emotionally repressed characters] I think there's an immense drama in things being held back and hidden and unspoken. I'm the go- to guy when you're doing something in that convention. But also, communication is never perfect. What you're hearing isn't necessarily what I'm imagining you're hearing. That interests me more than repression.

[on working again with former Mamma Mia! (2008) co-star Stellan Skarsgård in The Railway Man (2013)] It's very hard to look at Stellan and not see him in Lycra. Actually, the last time I'd seen him on a film set he was naked. So if there was a haunted look in my eyes, it wasn't because I was contemplating the war in Asia. It was because I'd seen horrors already beyond imagination.

[accepting the Best Actor Oscar for The King's Speech (2010)] I've a feeling my career's just peaked.

[on The King's Speech (2010) co-star Helena Bonham Carter] If I had to choose somebody to get stuck in a lift with, actually, she comes fairly high on the list. Because she's amusing, attractive, and very small.

[Accepting his Best Actor BAFTA for A Single Man (2009)] An encounter with Tom Ford is to come away feeling resuscitated, a little more worldly, better informed, better groomed, more fragrant and more nominated than one has ever been before.

It's been easy so far because I have someone who has dressed me right down to my socks. I think if you know you are going to get photographed you put some thought into it, but as much as possible I like to leave the decision to someone else. It used to be my wife, but then there are increasingly designers who offer you things and have great relationships with you and if you like what they do then it gets taken out of your hands. Actors are notoriously bad dressers. Between roles they don't know how to put themselves together any more. If you have just taken off a Victorian frock and you are about to go into the 1950s, you actually spend most of the rest of the time in T-shirts and pyjamas. So then when the events come along, if there is somebody out there who can say, "I've got a suit for you. Don't worry, I know your measurements", I know it sounds awfully spoiled, but I'll take that. I am not very good at thinking about it or designing the look myself. There are one or two actors who seem to have this flair and I don't know how they have it. They get out on the red carpet and they look amazing every time. I'm just getting older.

Now a beautiful person is assumed to be shallow and flaky. If you are beautiful in today's society, you are presumed to have no substance. I think a lot of talented and very bright people who are also physically beautiful have to work very hard if they don't want to just lean on their looks. I think there's resentment, there is the feeling that you can't have it all. I think the complexities of our own urban lives mean that there are opportunities for people who are not physically beautiful. I think it is rather expected that if you want to become a professor, that you don't look like someone from Baywatch. And I think someone that has the mind of a professor and also looks like Baywatch would just p*** people off because they don't want them to have all of that.

Dancing and singing [take] me very far out of my comfort zone.

I would have gone to university had I not allowed myself to be derailed into moody adolescent laziness. I liked to characterise it then as a defiant decision to resist the system. But I was just resistant to schoolwork. If someone wanted me to read Shakespeare, I wanted to read Thomas Mann. If someone tried to make me listen to Brahms, I had to listen to Hendrix. On the morning of A-level retakes, I thought, 'F*** it' and went back to bed, it felt like a treadmill I didn't want to be on.

Like most boys it [ABBA] wasn't my thing. I was 14 in 1974 and fancied girls to death.

[on Hugh Grant] He's very witty company. I've always found him bright, and he's a fantastic raconteur: he's wicked. He's not like his 'Notting Hill' persona at all.

[As an actor] it's frustrating playing someone stupider than you.

[on Valmont (1989)] It suffered grave misfortune in its time. I think it's a wonderful, beautiful film.