Joseph Fiennes Quotes

Merlin is really at the forefront, in that regard. We get a glimpse into the dark, Machiavellian corridors of power. I like the fact that, although he has powers, his powers are almost in his political guile as much as what he relies on, in darker forces.

Who wouldn't want to be wizard, at least for a day, as long as you didn't have the dilemmas and the situations that Merlin was thrown into. I'd be happy if you could actually use the powers to have a bit of fun and do something good for the world and maybe for yourself, whereas Merlin's kind of limited in that he has to look after Arthur.

The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.

There is no place so dangerous as a world without magic.

There are a couple of films that I've done, where I've had to get on a horse and wear a pair of tights, so that helped. But, nothing could have prepared me for the fun of wielding magic like Merlin does, especially in the perverted mind of Chris Chibnall.

I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.

I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.

I'm a huge 'Harry Potter' fan. When you're acting, it's a fantasy already, maybe it's the costumes, I love it. It's so fun.

Without Merlin, there would be no Gandalf, so I see them as the same thing, one a continuation of the other.

In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard.

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.

I don't particularly have any magical ambitions, but then, I never did. I just enjoyed the game.

What twelve year old wouldn't want to play an evil wizard?

You have to sort of see the way that the character behaves, and what the character says and does, and claim it in the same way that you claim anything, really.

There have been so many different versions of the legend and of 'Camelot,' so what I wanted to do was strip it all back, and go back to the beginning and tell the story of Arthur, from the beginning of the relationship between Merlin and Arthur.

I would love to just continue playing characters that break the mold. I like making interesting decisions when playing characters, so, taking something that would seem one way and then playing it a different way.

I'm a fantasy guy. So I brought the fantasy element to the Riddick, David Twohy brought the sci-fi, and it came together.You see that in every aspect of the film.

I guess maybe you don’t get to be the Merlin of the White Council by saving up frequent-flier miles

Structure is, for me, the most fun challenge about writing novels.

I read as much as I could, but really just spoke to Chris Chibnall and asked all the pertinent questions. That made me feel like we weren't going to do an off-the-peg Camelot, which has been touched upon in many films and TV series before. I really just picked his brain and, in doing so, I got fired up by tackling Merlin in a fresher angle.

BEFORE I DISCOVERED THE miracles of science, magic ruled the world.

Darkwing Duck and Don Karnage are the most fun to do, because they're both probably the closest to me - I kinda improvise a lot of them, kinda ad lib.

Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.

Acting was definitely half of what I loved about storytelling and about theater. So, when I get a chance to do a cameo in a show or do a movie, it's a lot of fun and it's always great stepping outside of yourself and either playing a bizarro version of yourself or playing a character.

The fun thing we get to do is mess around playing all sorts of different people. People that really existed, people that exist in a book - whom people love and have a specific idea of who they are, and you kind of have to work with that - or people that you can take a completely fresh look at.