Quote collection
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"It was always acting for me, since I was about 15. My middle brother always wanted to be a news anchor, so we always felt that he'd be the one to take over for dad, so we could go and do our thing."
"I knew I wanted to go to college and I wanted to study it acting, so I just looked for the best school that I could get into. Luckily, I had very supportive parents. I went to a conservatory that is basically drama school. You take one English class and one history class for four years but you don't take any other science or anything like that. It's strictly, from 7am until night, all acting. It's a lot. Some people find it too much, but for me I was preparing for a career and I never really looked back."
"It's very hard to just break into movies. I always felt like it would be giving up a theatre career to go and try and be in movies. So, I thought I'd exhaust the theatre thing, go as far as I can, and originate roles, be on Broadway, maybe win some Tony Awards, and then hopefully some door would open. Luckily, it did."
"You know, I gotta be honest. I have not done a lot of CGI work. I just haven't. I mean, there were hundreds of effects in Watchmen, and I probably dealt with almost none of them, because all my stuff was very practical."
"I just want to do as many different genres as I can. I think that's part of it... to not get pigeon-holed because if one of them breaks out and becomes a big hit then typically people want to keep putting you in that kind of role."
"At an early age my dad - probably because he's a journalist - said: "Just have something to say. Don't just blather. Always have one line in your mind." So, that was always my thing whenever I met someone when I was younger, if ever I got to meet a real celebrity."
"When I went to LA I was almost 30, I'd been nominated for two Tony awards, and on the New York theatre scene I was pretty well known. I went out to LA to meet with casting people, and I remember walking into one meeting and saying: "Hey, how are you? I'm Patrick..." And they said: "I'm so sorry! I thought you were British!" When I asked why, she replied: "Because you're 30 and I've never heard of you!""
"I think you have to pick and choose what is most important to tell the story."
"I like the not knowing of what the next job is."
"When you shoot a movie so quickly you can't really afford to shoot a bunch of extra footage because you don't have that luxury."
"For me, it doesn't matter whether it's a comedy, a Western or horror. As long as you've got a good story to tell, the genre almost doesn't matter. As an actor playing the role, it's all rooted in reality."
"You never want to judge your character."
"Mike Nicholls saw me in the musical of The Full Monty and brought me in to audition for Angels in America for HBO. And that opened a lot of doors because you could go to LA and say: "Well, I'm starring opposite Al Pacino and Meryl Streep...""
"When you're playing the good guy, you want to find the dirty parts - and when you're playing the bad guy, you want to find the vulnerability."
"A heroic nature is very Greek."
"In a normal movie, you'd never see one guy talk for an entire page, whether good or bad."
"I just don't watch a lot of TV."
"When I look at a character, whether he's good or bad, one scene or 10 scenes, I just have to find my way in."
"You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day."
"Honestly, if you're just going to be the love interest then at least let it be a really good movie. Not every role is going to be Hamlet, I know that."