Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor. "
Eddie Marsan
House
Stage
Time
Related Quotes:
" I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off. "
Eddie Marsan
Succeed
Drama
Acting
" I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me. "
Eddie Marsan
Think
Me
People
" I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish. "
Eddie Marsan
Worry
Great
Wife
" I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative. "
Eddie Marsan
Before
End
Good
" If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do. "
Eddie Marsan
Need
Job
You
" I'm a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn't ask a session musician, 'How do you play jazz,' and then, 'How do you play classical?' They just do it, because if they don't do it, they don't eat. "
Eddie Marsan
Play
Great
You
" The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character. "
Eddie Marsan
Thoughts
Acting
Think
" If your character doesn't express himself or doesn't feel confident expressing himself, then you don't express yourself. "
Eddie Marsan
You
Feel
Character
" When I was doing fringe theatre, my ambition was to do repertory. When I got to rep it was to do national theatre; then it was t,o get a couple of parts in television. I never had this great desire to overreach myself. I was too busy enjoying acting. I was just obsessed with it. "
Eddie Marsan
Theatre
Myself
Ambition
" My idea is just to do something different each time; the next thing I do has to be completely different to the thing I've done before - that's what I try and do, because you know, I'm an actor, not a film star. "
Eddie Marsan
You
Star
Know
" I love the fact that everyone's trying to be good-looking in L.A. - then I turn up and I get work. "
Eddie Marsan
Love
Good-Looking
Work
" I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants. "
Eddie Marsan
Saying
Villain
People
" My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do. "
Eddie Marsan
Boo
Who
Playing
" Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder. "
Eddie Marsan
Green
Class
Forever
" Paddy Considine is a great friend of mine, and he is a natural actor because he is an artist, and I'm not an artist. If I ever blow my own trumpet, it's as a craftsman. "
Eddie Marsan
Artist
Mine
My Own
" I'm used to playing characters who have a lot to say but don't know how to say it. "
Eddie Marsan
Used
Playing
Know
" I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't. "
Eddie Marsan
Bring
Terrible
Who
" You turn up on set, and somebody who has come out of Oxford, has done a BBC course, is telling you how to act. You think, 'Do me a favour. Go and make a coffee.' "
Eddie Marsan
Turn
Think
Coffee
" I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing. "
Eddie Marsan
Sometimes
Think
Someone
" I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face. "
Eddie Marsan
Comedy
Used
Think
" I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so. "
Eddie Marsan
Men
Friends
Happy
" When you watch 'Ray Donovan,' you think that it's about Hollywood, about scandal, about stars, and about trying to keep secrets. That's true, but that's also just the means by which you reveal secrets of the people suffering every day life. "
Eddie Marsan
Stars
Life
People
" The characters in 'Ray Donovan' are not very articulate - we're the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A. "
Eddie Marsan
You
Worst
Next
" I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking. "
Eddie Marsan
Me
Job
Camera
" With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role. "
Eddie Marsan
Play
Face
Character
" I didn't do well at school, and I don't have lots of academic reference points. "
Eddie Marsan
Academic
Well
School
" I've never played a gay character on screen, so that would be interesting. I've never played a gay character, and that would fascinate me because I'm not gay, so that would interest me. "
Eddie Marsan
Gay
Never
Me
" In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time. "
Eddie Marsan
Sister
See
Family
" When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything. "
Eddie Marsan
People
Doing
First
" As children, we all hold on to the myth of omnipotence. Comics are successful because kids identify with superheroes. They'll read a book or watch a TV programme and say, 'I'm that guy.' And that guy is always the one in control. "
Eddie Marsan
Children
Say
Control