John Rhys-Davies Quotes

Sometimes a writer just needs a hook.

Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are men at the top of their game, and Jackson especially is going to change the nature of film-making.

I'm not actually sure that actors or artists should be allowed to have a family, because the focus you need, the egotism, the myopia, is just taking away from the relationship.

As I come towards the end of my life, you get to see things in a slightly different perspective.

When you get back to fundamental questions - 'Why should anything exist?' A, I'm not sure what the answer is in terms of the science, and B, I'm not sure that science can even ask that question.

To be an actor for 30-odd years trying to become recognized, and to end up playing a full prosthetic and a character 3 foot 9', or something like that, is ... well, it just shows that you can get actors to do anything.

Western Europeans are not having any babies.

I think 'The Lost World' could've been a successful movie except for the fact that it pre-dated the good special effects and computer graphics.

I like heroes, and would like to be a hero myself. I suppose we all want that.

I am a believer in the evolutionary process, and yet I have sympathy for the friends of mine who are creationists. I don't find the positions incompatible.

'Indiana Jones' wasn't physically tough, but they are the only two films I've ever been ill on. On 'The Last Crusade,' I got sciatica. That's when the sciatic nerve, which goes through the funny hole in your pelvis down your leg, swells and rubs against the nerves.

If you've gotta follow a fashion, pick a good fashion, I say, yes.

Once you've got a child to the point that they've discovered books, they're safe. There's a world of the imagination that when they're hurt or upset, they can move into, and it is wonderful.

There's nothing like the discipline of having to work on a cold film set on the Danubian plain in Bulgaria. Boy, does it get cold.

When you think about a walking tree, laughter is the response.

Actors are always looking for actor-proof parts. A part so good you can't screw it up!

I've always been attracted to films which explore the qualities of courage.

It's not hard to get people to take a premise and accept it.

I'm a little smarter than most.

A solitary child growing up in Africa, you're really quite dependent on books.

To experience the unique sense of elation that you have when your child is sleeping on your chest in an incomparable emotion.

Unkindness is quite a major sin.

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

My parents were always Welsh-speaking and very proud of Wales.

Intellectually, now, I believe that it is a complete vanity to say positively there is no God.

I think I have more stamps in my passport than most stamp collectors have in their collections.

I think your children are your measure of success, regardless of work and career.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

No one should be allowed to stand for Parliament without proof that he has taken responsibility for other people.

If you cannot have fun on a set and enjoy what you're doing, you're better off giving it up.

Many do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.

There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially.

I'd love to spend more time on the Isle of Man. I love the anonymity of putting on a boiler suit and going down to buy parts for the compressor. And Norman Wisdom's a neighbour; I salute him occasionally.

Actually, I'm addicted to science fiction. Let me make my diction clear - I love sci-fi.

Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they're the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I've met a few real villains in my time, and they weren't the least bit sympathetic.

Basically, theater or film is a dangerous industrial environment.

'Shogun' was a mini-series, so even though it went on television, we filmed it like a movie.

When the writers themselves are a bit out of control, and their lives are collapsing around them, they seem to rejoice in misery and celebrate the wrong sort of things.

When you've opened your heart to a child as you have to, there's always the fear that you may discover that the child is not viable. Losing that child is not a position you want to find yourself in.

The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

I can't give a soundbite for love or money.

I enjoy acting. It's not that I begin to think I'm getting better. I now fully know that I've made no improvement whatsoever since I was 20. I can live with it.

How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?