Dan Stevens Quotes

I always wanted to be an actor.

I never quite toed the line.

The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.

It's not a bad lesson to learn in the bleaker months: how you view a storm is a question of perspective; provided you find the right rock to watch it from, it could be the most incredible thing you'll ever witness.

I'm lucky to be married to someone who entirely gets what I do. She is totally sympathetic to the actor's life. Her own mother was an actress, so she sort of grew up with it.

I don't see money or a particular status as an actor as a goal, but I want to do the best work I can in as interesting a range of roles as I can.

The Broadway audiences are very vocal and seem very engaged. For certain shows, especially with a show like 'The Heiress,' the audience's reactions sound like 'The Jerry Springer Show' sometimes. That seems to be a very New York thing. Oh, there's also the entrance round of applause here, which we don't get too much in London.

It's great when somebody is able to communicate an actual shot sequence to you and you know the world you're inhabiting with that. It's literally a haunting tune.

It's head and heart. I like to feed both. I always wanted to be an actor. But the cultural-intellectual side of things has always excited me. I wouldn't want to let it go.

In the 21st century, I think it's fair to say, homosexuality is more accepted in Britain and it's wonderful that my generation has been able to grow up with that.

Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy's, the Actors' Chapel on New York's 49th Street, peal the tune of 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway.

At 13, in my first year of Tonbridge, I went up for the part of Macbeth. I was up against the 17- and 18-year-olds, but for some reason I got the part. It made me incredibly unpopular with my peers, but it was the English and drama teachers who stepped in to save me when others wanted me kicked out of the school.

I don't think many people get to play big emotions in life.

I have only recently got interested in film, and it is a strange way of working in many ways. But actually, when it is at its best, it's quite an extraordinary way of working between a director and an actor, to really explore an inner life.

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

I saw Mercury Prize-winners Alt-J for the first time recently, touring their debut album 'An Awesome Wave,' and I'm still riding the high: they're the most musically dynamic and exciting band to have poured tune into my lug holes live since Bellowhead.

My dad's family were pretty working class, actually.

But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more.

Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have. People want to know what happens next, people hate the villains and love the lovers. It's good, fun TV. But I wouldn't call 'Downton' a soap opera as such.

Oh, it is quite possible that none of us in 'Downton' will ever again get the ratings this has had. But from a career point of view, it has opened so many doors.

Everything's so accelerated now.

Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.

I've had to learn when not to tweet. Like, you learn how to keep your mouth shut? Learn to keep your tweet shut.

The female attention I have to struggle hardest with is from my two-year-old daughter.

I was never very happy at school.

What was interesting was talking to older gay men about what it was like being gay in the Eighties.

People look at me, they know I've appeared in costume dramas and they automatically assume I must be a Tory, I must be a certain type of person.

I would like to do something modern and possibly funny.

I'm amazed by just constantly - there's not a week that goes past where there's not someone in Ulan Bator or Rio De Janeiro suddenly says, 'Ooh, 'Downton' started this week.' You completely forget it's staggered across the world.

Family is hugely important to me. Having kids is the best possible way to shake off any kind of darkness that might accompany a role that you're playing.

I haven't done as many films as I would have liked. A lot of my contemporaries have done more. I don't have 'I will be a movie star' emblazoned on anything, but I'd like do a bit more screen stuff and then when the time is right come back to theatre. When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.