Jeremy Irons Says

A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away.
Jeremy Irons

Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.
Jeremy Irons

Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
Jeremy Irons

An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
Jeremy Irons

And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.
Jeremy Irons

And whenever I'm in a situation where I'm wearing the same as 600 other people and doing the same thing as 600 other people, looking back, I always found ways to make myself different, whether it be having a red lining inside of my jacket, having red shoes, it hasn't changed.
Jeremy Irons

At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
Jeremy Irons

At the age of 12 I was going on to another boarding school in another part of the country. We change schools at 13 in this country.
Jeremy Irons

Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.
Jeremy Irons

Godspell was a good leap for me, it was a good shop window.
Jeremy Irons

However, I wasn't very good at the sciences, or didn't have a lot of help in the sciences or something but certainly didn't set science for my A level. And when I came to take my A levels I didn't get a good enough result to go to University.
Jeremy Irons

I always wanted to do more plays but I never quite understood how you got asked to do a play. I had done house plays, but they were sort of skits.
Jeremy Irons

I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.
Jeremy Irons

I envy children who know that they're going to become doctors, know they're going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that's what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.
Jeremy Irons

I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.
Jeremy Irons

I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.
Jeremy Irons

I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me.
Jeremy Irons

I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.
Jeremy Irons

I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
Jeremy Irons

I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.
Jeremy Irons

I'm sure that Steve Martin would love to be where I am, and I would like to be more where he is as far as the comedy stakes are concerned.
Jeremy Irons

It's always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.
Jeremy Irons

My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.
Jeremy Irons

My next step must be to go to drama school. Well, I get into drama school, so I did that.
Jeremy Irons

No, I don't believe in hard work. If something is hard, leave it. Let it come to you. Let it happen.
Jeremy Irons

Now in my theater training I showed no aptitude at all.
Jeremy Irons

Now the decision to play a role is halfway towards understanding the character, because you empathize with it and that's why you want to play it.
Jeremy Irons

Paris Hilton, that's very interesting what she did. I've never done that. I haven't really sort of ever got into that. As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old don't have the energy I can remember how life used to be.
Jeremy Irons

So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine.
Jeremy Irons

So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.
Jeremy Irons

So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.
Jeremy Irons

The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.
Jeremy Irons

We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.
Jeremy Irons

What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.
Jeremy Irons