Colin Firth Quotes

I was in a lake in ‘Love Actually’, and I was attacked by some hideous aquatic beast and was rushed to the hospital by a man named Rafael! Something stung my elbow, and it blew up to the size of a tennis ball.

I’ve grown up surrounded by Americans and to a very large extent feel American. It sounds strange because I seem to be so quintessentially English in everyone’s mind – and perhaps I am. Perhaps it’s quintessentially English to have a fascination with America.

People coming up and saying something nice is always welcome. But when you’re being secretly photographed, that’s not so nice. I would rather shake hands with someone and exchange a few words than take a selfie.

In filming, you’re waiting – you’re waiting for lights, you’re waiting for people to set things up – and when you’re not waiting, you’re repeating.

I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it’s a group of people I’m dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.

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.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.

It’s a very dangerous state. You are inclined to recklessness and kind of tune out the rest of your life and everything that’s been important to you. It’s actually not all that pleasurable. I don’t know who the hell wants to get in a situation where you can’t bear an hour without somebody’s company.

I think that London is very much like that. I find there’s humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it’s a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It’s a precision science in a way.

I’d love to try my hand at something else.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that’s when you come over all humbug. It’s happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.

The only reason I’m in ‘Kingsman’ is because Matthew enjoys playing with the unexpected. I’m not playing Harry Hart because I’m the butchest actor in Britain. I’m playing it because he said I’m the last person anyone would expect to see in that role!

What infuriates me is that in America violence is judged in context, whereas language is not. So with language there is an arithmetic that says: one f*** is a PG 13, two f***s is an R. They don’t say: one bullet through one head is a PG 13, two bullets through more than two heads is an R.

It’s a film called ‘Kursk’, which is a true story about a submarine disaster. There was an accident on board a Russian submarine in the year 2000, and it stranded a large number of sailors. That’s next.

It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn’t do anything to match up to your wife.

I can’t imagine seeing Batman in black and white. It was such a colourful TV series. I know. I’m ancient. It wasn’t abnormal to be without a television in those days. People who had colour were special.

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.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

I haven’t had to struggle very much. I haven’t paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they’re doing.

One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age – at the age of 38 in fact – he changed course and decided to become a doctor.

I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen’s directing – directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth, but one of them was that he doesn’t rehearse, and another was that he doesn’t really direct. If he doesn’t like it… he cuts it out of the movie or even replaces you. And he doesn’t talk to you.

I think that, often, actors represent what they’re not. You get people who define the aristocracy who are not aristocratic – they’re lower-middle class or working class. An awful lot of your so-called angry young actors have grown up in extreme bourgeois comfort. It really is surprisingly common.

‘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.

The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn’t know well.

They’re not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it’s not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques.

We are actors who show up for work in our sloppy gear, and we’ve got this extraordinary tailor. It’s someone else who’s done the design; someone else who’s cut the suit; someone else who’s measured it. Basically, your job is to just wear it.

I would definitely do TV, at the drop of a hat, if I was offered a good role.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see my Dad, I see my grandmother. For a while it was my mother looking back at me. If only it was my Dad.

I’m fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: `Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

If one lazily thinks of what a fashion designer might do if he’s going to conquer cinema next, it would be taking the opportunity to display his fashion sensibilities.

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.

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.

It didn’t have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it’s notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don’t think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: “dying is easy, comedy is hard.” I hear it.

To be bothered wherever you go – it’s not a rational thing to want at all.

It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there’s usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.

We’ve always been involved with America – I have a son who lives there and it’s a big part of my life.

I’m not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don’t get it right or don’t respect others’ needs.

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.

People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It’s not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

Forget trying to be sexy. That’s just gruesome.

I’ll be your friend so long as you’re not crap

The thing is that anybody looks good in the right clothes. It will affect your bearing. It will affect your demeanor. It informs the way you behave.

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.

Something like ‘A Single Man,’ it was tiny; it was financed by one guy. We all lost money doing it.

I do notice that when I’ve been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.

We all know the dangers of sequels. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place too often, and I think you’ve got to move beyond it, go the extra mile and have the courage not to just repeat the first one.

A life of very, very serious, po-faced films would drive me nuts. I need – and I’m fortunate to have – a fairly varied menu in that respect. I mean, I was shooting ‘Mamma Mia!’ at the same time as I was doing Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Genova’. That was a very, very bizarre summer.

I backpacked through France and Italy in my teens, and then I was at Cannes with the first movie I did in ’84.

If I were to write a book about the progress of getting to a third film, it would be a long one.

Hollywood hasn’t aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.

I think it’s quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I’m Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

Nothing brings you closer together than blind terror.

I absolutely don’t care about my looks and I’m so used to them that I wouldn’t change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.

I love ‘Manhattan’, and I know it’s not one of Woody’s favorites.

The skill of a good actor is to make it always seem like you’re in that fantastically spontaneous moment. Very often, a stand-up comedian has a different instinct, which is to reinvent. Once you’ve laid down some material, and made them laugh, you move on and find some new material.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

One of the things that makes you want to be an actor, speaking only for myself, is that there’s something infantile about it. You’re suspending disbelief, pretending and entering into a story world.