- There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible.
- You know, I don't think you need to be educated to be a great actor.
- Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.
- Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.
- So there's a lot of people tied into believing that the traditional response to the authorship question. In terms of actors, some people get very angry about it.
- But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.
- But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.
- I think that was very important to Bacon... personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it was Francis Bacon, because it is very difficult to prove.
- It's difficult for me to say, but I don't think the sex scenes are particularly erotic.
- Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth.
- And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.
- Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the opportunity to fill it with voice and verse and movement, not interpretation.
- Pretty much all children are helpful to act with; they lack any guile when they act. Ruby (Ruby Barnhill) was particularly helpful: very, very present. And you also hear the very useful basic instructions that Steven would never say to Tom Hanks or to me, but he says to her: "Now concentrate, take your time before we start, just get into character, feel and think what's going on." I'm doing that anyway, but it's great to be reminded. Steven's got such incredible performances out of children; understands them so well and loves them so deeply, loves their imagination and energy tirelessly. So I was really very happy to be quiet and watch that. And then our [Mark and Ruby] relationship really came together when we were on screen.
- It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.
- Moments are incredible, but in my fantasy mind I see a Globe company which is renowned throughout the world for what it does with pure storytelling. So that people come and say: it's not just the building, it's the only place you can hear this kind of work.
- If it was ever possible to offer one human being a thousand years of life, I would put Steven Spielberg at the front of the queue because he is the one who would make the most of it. Steven feels things deeply but he is so curious about the world and the possibilities of where humanity is going, technologically and compassionately.
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