When I finished my A-levels, I assumed I’d be able to get work as an actor. But I couldn’t. I didn’t get an audition. Nothing. So I thought I’d better train and then the parts would come.
BEN WHISHAWThe most amazing thing is when you find yourself watching someone in the café or something doing something weird. It’s amazing what people do, isn’t it, when you just look at them, when you take the time to look.
More Ben Whishaw Quotes
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Filmmakers tell stories to explore human nature, which is always a flawed thing.
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I love the characters I’ve had the opportunity to play.
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I can be shy, but I’m not really. I try to be better at overcoming these things people have said.
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I’m not tortured and neurasthenic – I’m really not.
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What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they’re great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.
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My favorite Bond films are the really early ones, the first ones in fact, like ‘Dr. No’ and ‘From Russia with Love.’
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Even today, England is a very repressed, repressive country, and there’s pressure to be kind of a certain way, so people do things that ultimately make them sad.
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I’d like to have a go at directing.
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One of the things I find very difficult about theatre is the repetition – that something can slide away from your original intentions.
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I used to collect knick-knacks, like wizards, trolls and little buddhas, and arrange them like precious things on a shelf.
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I find it weird that people want to know about you.
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I think being very thin has had a lot to do with how I’ve been cast.
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We are so mired in the complexity of our reactions to other people that when you come across someone who is asocial, there is a simplicity that is refreshing.
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I don’t have any ambition to make lots of money or win an Oscar or anything like that. It’s not about that for me.
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When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way – they make you look at the world in a different way.
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I reckon domesticated cats have a pretty good life.
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I think I have a degree of confidence, but I also have terrible insecurity, like anybody does.
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The thing about acting is that it’s fairly random. At the end of the day you take what drifts past you or what’s given to you.
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I’ve gone on workout regimes, but I seem to have a system that is very resistant to changing.
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For me, it’s important to keep a level of anonymity.
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I was quite a shy child – not chronically, but I tended to blend into the background.
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I always feel I am in the dark. You are never finished… it is not as if you can look back and think: ah… I know what I am talking about. You are only as good as your last job and are always struggling and striving and you never quite get to where you want to be.
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I’ve been out to LA a couple of times but, over there, the Grenouille in me always comes to the surface. I feel completely terrified, totally flummoxed, like I don’t understand what the hell is going on. I’ve no desire at all to go back there.
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The most amazing thing is when you find yourself watching someone in the café or something doing something weird. It’s amazing what people do, isn’t it, when you just look at them, when you take the time to look.
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I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I’m still fascinated by those things.
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I don’t think anyone can walk through the world in a state of vulnerability all the time, can they?
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