Rhys Ifans Quotes

I think Liverpool generates generosity which rubs off - it's a good place to work and to party.

It's every boy's dream to play Captain Hook.

Film can become stagnant as a medium.

I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss.

Well, I need to be frightened on a regular basis.

I'm a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.

I'm a factory-floor actor: I learn the lines, I get there on time.

I am not gadgety at all. It's not that I'm appalled by technology, but I've taken my time acquiring any of it.

Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.

Spider-Man is a school boy that's looking for his parents.

When I was taught Shakespeare in school, it was such an alien, sanitized puzzle, it made no sense.

What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.

I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me.

I've worked with Hollywood stars, but the reason most of the Hollywood stars I've worked with are Hollywood stars is that they're excellent actors, so I've been very lucky.

Acting is not an intellectual process for me. It comes from my heart. It's this strange netherworld of osmosis where I simply become.

In terms of partying and reckless abandon, I'm Don Juan. But, in terms of my heart, I'm the most loyal man you'll ever meet.

There aren't many odysseys in cinema for characters.

The older I get, I'm really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

Don't be late. Learn your lines. Be good to people. Treat people nice.

I never thought I would be in a film.

Every species has its pub.

I'll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It's my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it's not England, it's London.

The joy of a period film is that you're taken to another world. The costumes determine the way you move, and then consequently the way you breathe. And then, the way you breathe effects the way you think.

You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.

But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed].

Howard Marks is a great friend and a great Welshman.

When I'm not filming, I do rock n' roll; when I'm not doing rock n' roll, I do filming.

On a conventional film, you do one take, and if it's good, they say, 'Let's do another one for insurance.'

I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.

I'm always flabbergasted and overwhelmed by the audience a film reaches.

Club DJs don't talk to the crowd.

In a sense, I feel a lot more an outsider in Los Angeles than I did in Newfoundland.

I don't do celebrity.

It's like a badge of honour if you're a British actor and you get the 'Harry Potter' call. It meant a lot to me.

I never think career.

Being on tour is a giggle.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.

After you have been incarcerated for so long, whatever story is told in the aftermath is beautiful.

I am essentially very shy. Which, I guess, is why I'm very good at not being shy.

I don't have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That's what children do, and that's what CGI enables us to do.

In Wales, singing and storytelling are party skills, not professions.

There is no such thing as a criminal life. Life is life, and life is criminalized. No one ever, in the history of life, has chosen a criminal life. No one has ever said, 'I want to be a criminal.' No one ever has done that.

It is joyous for any actor to enter other grounds of consciousness and thought. At the end of the day, we just all like dressing up and playing around.

I consider projects very deeply, but there's always a point in your life where there's a bit of randomity.

Shyness is invariably a suppression of something. It's almost a fear of what you're capable of.

I've reached a point in my career when I can demand certain conditions, and one of them is a weekend break every three weeks during the shoot.

I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time.

The whole film genre is one of deceit. It is the suspension of disbelief. That's what all theater and all film is based on.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss.

The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that.

I honed my passion for acting in theatre and education, and I think it's important not to belittle the child audience.

If you had to find a period in history that would equate to what the Internet has presented us with now, it would be Elizabethan England. It was a world in flux.

We're in an age of enlightenment, and we have a choice as a society which path to take.

For me, 'Come and See' is, by a million miles, the best film about war that has ever been made. I would highly recommend, encourage and enforce anyone to watch it.

When I was young, I was in a hurry to live. And now I'm just not in a hurry.

People say: 'Oh, it's only acting,' but it's not ever just acting. At least not with me.

I'm Welsh. We didn't do 'Peter Pan.' We have far more ancient legends to be put to sleep with.

I'm a real magpie when it comes to music; it's all random, and there's no pattern to what I like.

I freely admit that I am a bit of a misfit.

My personal life is invented for me, so why bother?

I just don't take myself as seriously anymore. But as a result of that, I am taking myself more seriously. My ego has gone on holiday, and it can't get a flight back home.