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" 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
Related Quotes:
" When I think of character actors, I think of Spencer Tracy; I think of Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall. When I was a young lad watching films, my eyes were on them - watching 'On the Waterfront,' my eyes are on Rod Steiger and Karl Malden, not on Brando. "
Eddie Marsan
Character
Watching
Young
" I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker. "
Eddie Marsan
Love
Listen
Jazz
" I have my career and my family, and that's it. "
Eddie Marsan
Career
Family
" I wouldn't have been interested in making a show just about Hollywood, 'cause I find Hollywood boring. I find people and families very interesting. "
Eddie Marsan
People
Boring
Find
" I come from a council estate in Tower Hamlets, and by no means am I the only person who has done well - one of my friends is head of year in a great school in Twickenham. Another is a writer; another is an artist, a musician. "
Eddie Marsan
School
Artist
Done
" As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself. "
Eddie Marsan
School
People
Need
" I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me. "
Eddie Marsan
Women
You
Men
" There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. "
Eddie Marsan
You
Great
Imagination
" I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there. "
Eddie Marsan
Green
Me
Love
" 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
" 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
" Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fantastic career who kept his feet on the ground. "
Eddie Marsan
Great
Feet
Choices
" I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion. "
Eddie Marsan
Think
Go
Stars
" I knew what kind of actor I was going to be, and I looked for inspiration to people like Alec Guinness, Cyril Cusack, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent. I looked at them and thought, 'They play human beings as they really are.' "
Eddie Marsan
Kind
People
Inspiration
" 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 was a struggling actor, I worked for a party company. One of my friends from school was working for an advertising agency, and I turned up to one of his company's parties dressed as an alien to collect tickets on the door. "
Eddie Marsan
Door
Advertising
School
" I'm very blue collar myself. So it was easy for me to embody that in a sense. It's much harder for me to embody Norrell than it is to embody Terry Donovan. "
Eddie Marsan
Myself
Sense
Me
" Acting was a way of me finding myself, which I think is the case of a lot of actors, regardless of where they come from. "
Eddie Marsan
Think
Acting
Me
" If you're confident, then it helps you live up to your potential, but if you believe because you went to a certain school it means you're entitled to have a particular career, you'll fall flat on your face eventually. "
Eddie Marsan
Face
You
Live
" 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
" I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.' "
Eddie Marsan
Meetings
You
Wife
" 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
" My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it. "
Eddie Marsan
Business
Job
Just
" I wasn't that hard. I wasn't that tough. I wasn't that funny - I looked like me. "
Eddie Marsan
Funny
Looked
Tough
" It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence. "
Eddie Marsan
Play
Way
Violence
" 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
" What I love about the East End is that there's a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance. "
Eddie Marsan
Courage
Ignorance
Perseverance
" I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. "
Eddie Marsan
People
Work
Great
" I always define egotistical thoughts as the thoughts I think other people have of me. "
Eddie Marsan
Think
Me
People
" I'm not a great fiction reader. I love history. I love history and philosophy. "
Eddie Marsan
History
I Love
Love