So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game. – Jeremy Irons
At age 10 or 12 he’s going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton. – Jeremy Irons
I have played characters where I haven’t been absorbed – you know, what I call a typical film leading man role where you just have to look gorgeous and be attractive and charming. It bores me. I like a bit of dirt, a bit of sand in the oyster. – Jeremy Irons
What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it’s going to be worth it, and then maybe I’ll surprise myself. – Jeremy Irons
There’s a great thing about amateur sport: it is purer. And the athletes are not open to so much pressure with amateur sport. – Jeremy Irons
I wouldn’t call myself a method actor, but I have my own method. I do my own research. I come up with a background for the character. I’m not a club man. I don’t like isms. I’ve never really studied Stanislavski. – Jeremy Irons
A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you’re playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you’re playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you’re playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality. – Jeremy Irons
Peter Brook’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ I remember seeing. That was pretty early on. And suddenly, I realized how theatrical Shakespeare is, how alive, how wonderful it is when it’s opened up by a great director and a great company. – Jeremy Irons
Mathematicians are always playing tricks on each other. They’re always pulling jokes on each other. – Jeremy Irons
And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I’m probably regarded as quite prickly to work with. – Jeremy Irons
You ask my wife or my two sons, and they’ll tell you that I ain’t free with the money. – Jeremy Irons
I envy children who know that they’re going to become doctors, know they’re going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that’s what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything. – Jeremy Irons
Actors often behave like children, and so we’re taken for children. I want to be grown up. – Jeremy Irons
He’s a man who… well, one of the great things about Shakespeare is that his characters are inconsistent, and that’s something I think makes him a writer above most writers because inconsistency is what we, as people, are full of. We maybe don’t see it in ourselves too often, but we are inconsistent. – Jeremy Irons
And whenever I’m in a situation where I’m wearing the same as 600 other people and doing the same thing as 600 other people, looking back, I always found ways to make myself different, whether it be having a red lining inside of my jacket, having red shoes, it hasn’t changed. – Jeremy Irons
I keep working with fairly inexperienced directors. You know, if you have a good crew, a good cameraman, you know, I know what I’m doing. If the actors know what they’re doing, we can all pull together, and it works. – Jeremy Irons
I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don’t take on characteristics which are very alien to me. – Jeremy Irons
When I’m not working, I don’t mix with actors, really. I have about two or three friends from theater school, and we call each other and meet. But in the main, no. I’m more happy with musicians or horse riders or sailors. – Jeremy Irons
The danger of dioxins in our environment, our food chain, and our bodies is difficult to illustrate, since they are not visible to the naked eye. My time in Vietnam allowed me to see the result of large quantities of them and therefore understand better the insidiousness of the smaller quantities that have found their way into our lives and bodies. – Jeremy Irons
There are wonderful things happening all around the world. From Nova Scotia to Kerala, Bristol to Melbourne, and even in the Philippines, zero waste is on the agenda. I think what’s particularly inspiring is when communities don’t wait to be told what to do but just go ahead and do it. – Jeremy Irons
I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me. – Jeremy Irons
I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head. – Jeremy Irons
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly. – Jeremy Irons