Joseph Fiennes Quotes

But it`s a strange thing when people judge you because you`re not doing some big Hollywood film. Are you suggesting I should be in The Dukes of Hazzard? I mean, hello?

I`m a believer, however naively, that someone will place me in a project because they`ve seen my work, rather than me being bullish or so ambitious that I get the part by any other means.

I don`t know what my limitations are until I reach them. I look for the challenge.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can`t wait to get on to the later stuff.

Being the youngest makes you long for more of a voice. You find that voice early in theatrics of the kitchen. I was the one screaming, `Hey, where is my food?`.

I`ve always believed that you shouldn`t want to mend a broken heart, because that`s someone you don`t want to forget. Scars can be good.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

Give me a sword fight any day.

I don`t read reviews. I can always spot an actor who`s read his reviews, because if they`re good, he`s swaying about the stage, and if they`re bad, he`s changed his performance. He comes in limping or something.

It`s weird. I never hid adolescence. I kind of bypassed it, and I`m a bit angry that I didn`t go through all the angst. I had the acne but no angst. From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of a Rough Gang - we went around and terrorised all the pupils in school. I was this really nasty kid, and then overnight I turned into the man I am now.

Well, that`s his journey. I know that I might have only got Shakespeare in Love because someone else turned it down; it`s a very small marketplace. So it would feel weird to say, `Oh, yeah I could have been there on Oscar night`, because the whole chemistry of the film is built around that particular actor. Who knows if it would have had the same effect with a different cast. It`s a mercurial world of alchemy. (on turning down Adrian Brody`s role in The Pianist which garnered the actor an Oscar)

I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth is through fantasy.

I was in this guy`s office in LA two years ago and he said: `Love your work, Joe, love your work.` I`m thinking, wow, he came all the way to catch me as Christ in Son of Man at the Barbican. I asked what he`d seen me in and he replied: `Nothing` - without a flicker of irony. I thought, OK, that`s how it works.

Who has gone through their lives without those ups and downs, whether they are a journalist or an actor or a painter or an accountant? There are always going to be times when it doesn`t flow as much as you were hoping. So of course I`m going to fail. And when I do fail I hope I fail better and better, again and again. I am happy to fail.

I`d like to be a passion fruit. Not because it`s passionate, but because someone I know is mad about them and has got me onto them.

For a lot of British actors, the theatre is home. It`s what they did before you knew them, as it were.

From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of the Rough Gang - we went around and terrorized all the pupils in school.

What`s that Russian saying? `How do you make God Laugh? - Tell him your plans.` It`s kind of true.

I withdrew after Shakespeare in Love (1998) and went back to the theater, to what I know. I went back to what my initial voice was, which was to find a range and freedom and a creative energy. If that meant not following up with a typical leading-man role, then that`s what it is. I`m an actor, and whatever speaks to me I will do.

It takes years to establish yourself, and then you have one big film and everyone calls you an overnight success. You think, `Christ, I`ve been sweating and crying for seven years.`

I`ve got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.