Acting Quotes

“They [Barnes Theatre Club] were a very good group, and for some reason when I finished the backstage thing, I just decided to that I should try to act. So I auditioned for Guys and Dolls and got a little tiny part as some Cuban dancer or something and then in the next play I got the lead part, and then I got my agent. So I owe everything to that little club.”

“I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love his every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don`t know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it kind of stuck with me.”

“The acting come along by accident. I’ve never trained or anything, so I’ve only very recently become even vaguely comfortable with it. On Harry Potter I was so consciously of the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. I used to sit on the side of the set throwing up. I think I will go to drama school now, thought. I did a play which I got fired from in the West End, and I realized I need to learn some of the fundamentals like how to act [discusses his early experience as an theater actor].”

“I haven’t really decided to be an actor yet! I started doing plays when I was about 15 or 16. I only did it because my dad saw a bunch of pretty girls in a restaurant and he asked them where they came from and they said drama group. He said “Son, that is where you need to go.”

“I’ve changed so much. I’m not nearly as cocky as I was, I was a real prat for the first month. I didn’t talk to anyone. I just drank coffee and told everyone I was 24 and this famous theatre actor just back from South Africa.”

“Thats the worst thing, I don’t really care if people say I’m a bad actor, I can like work on that, but if they just say that he’s ugly thats just like “oh.. really?”

“I am now determined to do really weird parts but I think I overdo it in auditions so nobody really trusts me!”

“Sometimes I think, ‘To hell with acting,’ and then I realize I could be working at a shoe shop, acting is much cooler.”

“I have no idea. I think I would have just gone to university and would have kind of just done the average thing [if he hadn't become an actor].”

“It sounds lame, but I was really concentrating on this job. It was my first American thing so I was pretty focused. I went to Portland for two months before we starting shooting, and I just didn’t talk to anybody for ages during the beginning of the shoot. I never went out, but I kind of broke down half way through. I was like, ‘Okay, people are starting to think that I’m actually out of my mind now.’”

“Since I started acting it’s kind of been a bit mad. I never really did anything before and two years ago I started acting and I’ve kind of been in work ever since. Then Harry Potter came along and it’s been a huge step and a massive event in my life.”

“I’m not massively concerned about doing lots of acting jobs,” he says. “If it all just went, right now, I’d be like, ‘All right. I don’t really care.’ That’s probably a stupid thing to say. But I don’t, really. I think it’d be much worse to do a load of stuff that’s really bad. Because then you can’t go into another career. If you’ve made an idiot out of yourself, you’re never going to be taken seriously, as a lawyer or something, if you’re, like, a joke actor. The only thing I want from anything is to not be embarrassed.”

“He admires the films of Jim Jarmusch, as well as the renegade auteurs of the 1970s, ‘when you could just make a film for nothing. There’s no reason why a film should cost 100 million. It’s crazy. People will say, “We’ll fly you out there to some country, pay for all your living expense, and then we’ll pay you.” You’re just like: why? I’m not really sure what my point is … I don’t want to be paid ever again! I hate money! I want to do anything for free!’ ‘No he doesn’t,’ pipes in his publicist, silent up to this point.”

“[On how he chooses his roles] “I try to choose things which are something that I’m going through in my life,” he says. “Jobs that will help me realize or add something about myself. I don’t really think about it in terms of a career.”

“[On Full Frontal Nudity] 14. Would you do full-frontal nudity like Daniel Radcliffe did?
I think it would depend on what it is. Yeah, it really does depend on what it is. And I don’t think a lot of people would really want to see that. I think it would ruin the illusion [Laughs].”

“You can never be known for what you want to be known for,” he notes. “People will know you for whatever they want to know you for.”