English Actors Quotes

The American actor is much more used to being physically relaxed and using their bodies better, and English actors are a little bit unrelaxed, but they're better at vocal technique.

I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.

Hollywood don't always pay a lot of money. Because we're English they think we're cheap!

It's like they talk about how American actors have the method and English actors just kind of switch views faster. And John [Hurt] is telling me the story as he's sitting in that witness chair, and they're putting the final touches of makeup on. And he goes, "Hold on a second," to stop his story so he can do the take. And he does this incredible take. They go, "Cut." And then immediately John goes, "Anyways, so Alec, he's playing the chess." And I'm just going, "Holy crap." You get whiplash from those kinds of quick turns!

I wouldn't say no to being in a film with Jude Law. I love English actors.

Where I think the American actor is slightly at a disadvantage is in vocal technique. I don't think that words are their friend in the same way that English actors are used to using words: understanding about consonance and how to shade a vowel to show emotional color.

When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.

English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time.

I have a great admiration for English actors and actresses and have used them at every opportunity over the years, but now I won't have to import them to New York.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from L.A., are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good.

If you're an English actor, and you're asked to do an episode - especially the Christmas episode - of 'Downton Abbey,' you can't turn it down. It's like, 'Of course!'

Many great horror stories are period pieces and English actors have a facility for historic characters.

We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.

If you're an English actor and turn up in America, they don't have an opinion about where you sit. They have no idea what auditions to send you to, so they send you to everything.

Oh, I love period dramas, especially period dramas starring Colin Firth. I'm like Bridget Jones if she were actually fat." "Oh... Colin Firth. He should only do period dramas. And period dramas should only star Colin Firth. (One-star upgrade for Colin Firth. Two stars for Colin Firth in a waistcoat.) "Keep typing his name, even his name is handsome.

I would like to be able to be both a film actor and a stage actor - to be an American actor in the style of a lot the English actors who do films. They are these wonderful actors who can do everything.

'Friends' is easy to dismiss, but it's really good television - the art with which those actors play with comedy shouldn't be denigrated. And they also know how to play irony, which I think a lot of English actors might find quite difficult.