British Actors Quotes

Some British actors are snobby about telly, and I don’t understand that.

I think, as a generation of British actors, we’re becoming a bit soft and too manipulated by the business.

I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I’m learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed.

Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors’ psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don’t enter into all this methody way of doing things.

My first job was a film called ‘Storm Damage’ for the BBC. I was 16 and working with really respected British actors. I didn’t have an agent at the time, and it kind of threw me into real acting.

British actors wear wigs a lot. I find it to be a nice ritual at the end of the day, take the wig off, clean the makeup off, go home, leave work behind me.

The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don’t make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don’t have bank accounts. They live from day to day.

When I first did a U.S. pilot season, there were very few British actors schlepping around town trying to get into television. That was 1999.

British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren’t film stars or theatre actors; they’re very much both.

I think it would be a problem if Hollywood was casting British actors only as villains; if that were the case, then certainly there would be cause for concern.

With most British actors, it’s amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and work in.

I’m not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I’ve done it’s pretty obvious I’m not going to make a ‘Mission: Impossible.’

I think there’s a quality of passion to the American actor. I’m certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the mechanical and intellectual process is dominant in the British.

‘Game of Thrones’ is wonderful. My theory is they employ all these British actors because, one, they are like me and grateful. Two, we turn up, and we know our lines. Three, we don’t demand a 60 ft. Winnebago and PA, and four, largely we are very uncomplaining.

I think we’re very lucky that there is a tradition of British actors working in America and being respected in America, and I’ve always liked Kate Winslet and her work and respected her.

British actors used to be scared of the multi-year options that U.S. TV shows demand. That has changed, because the same is now happening in the U.K.

I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn’t take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans.

I was offered and accepted a part in ‘A Few Best Men,’ and then the Australian actor’s union argued that there were too many British actors. And the director decided to lose me.

I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I’m learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed. Maybe I would have less gray hairs today.

Not surprisingly, there is a cultural divide between American and British actors regarding the self-promotion associated with new media.

British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.

The British actors I’ve met and worked with have all been very supportive of each other.

I have to audition for everything; there is no Mrs. Robbie Williams free pass, and because I’m working with British actors everyone is so polite – no one mentions Robbie.

I don’t know why British actors are getting big parts in American TV shows. Maybe it’s because we’re cheap.

It’s often assumed that British actors read Shakespeare and sonnets as we’re going to bed at night and we’re all very familiar with it.

The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.

There’s an honourable tradition of British actors who’ve gone to Hollywood playing baddies. Part of that is because we grow up with Richard III and Macbeth – we’re not afraid of our villains.

British actors are pretty good, by and large, at turning on at ‘action’ and off at ‘cut.’

A lot of British actors will look at America as such a land of opportunity. In England, there’s such a small pool of working actors of color. There’s such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.