Jeremy Irons Quotes

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.

The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you’re always asked to do what you’ve already done.

So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.

So nevertheless, what I’m saying is that what one is – one’s parameters are constantly narrowed by one’s success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.

So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine.

Paris Hilton, that’s very interesting what she did. I’ve never done that. I haven’t really sort of ever got into that. As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old don’t have the energy I can remember how life used to be.

Now in my theater training I showed no aptitude at all.

No, I don’t believe in hard work. If something is hard, leave it. Let it come to you. Let it happen.

My next step must be to go to drama school. Well, I get into drama school, so I did that.

My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.

It’s always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.

I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.

I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.

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.

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.

I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.

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.

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.

I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.