Richard Ayoade Quotes

With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good.

I'm not a terribly social person, and so I have to really like people to work with them.

I'm not sure I'd hire myself in anything. I certainly couldn't be an actor. That would be terrible. For everyone.

I think people have the capacity to be many different things and many seemingly contradictory behaviors.

Has any film ever been made that's better than the worst episode of Columbo?

I have all these things that I want to say to her, like... Like how I can tell she's a lonely person, even if other people can't. Cause I know what it feels like to be lost and lonely and invisible.

I think there's nothing worse than telling actors what to do in front of everyone, because then on the next take, everyone's waiting to see if you do that ... Everyone watches. It's just the worst thing.

I find performing very difficult. It's difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, 'Well, why do it?'

No. I really don't think I'm cool. I'm not.

I don't really know what my personality is anyway. I don't really have one.

I was directing before I started doing 'The IT Crowd.' It wasn't something that led on after acting I guess. I was sort of doing this stuff before acting.

So I've tried to make this book as dense as possible, like a neutron star. And if you think I came up with that simile by googling 'What stuff is most dense?', you'd be wrong. I already knew neutron stars were maybe dense before I googled it to make sure.

The act of seeing any film generally is you knowing more than the characters, even if it's the classic Hitchcock shot of two people talking and a bomb being under the table. Part of the pleasure of it is seeing where people go wrong, and the irony of situations.

Somewhere in the distance a wolf could be howling, but he decides not to. This particular wolf is by nature quiet and doesn't wish to blindly conform to stereotype.

I've always felt that actors in my experience have a very good and accurate instinct about whether something feels right or not. They just have a sense because they have to literally do it.

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

I suppose I sort of like effects that have some organic elements rather than ones that are entirely generated by a computer. Just because, no matter how complex the algorithm is, it's still an algorithm.

The most interesting part of filming is what the actors do. That's the primary link between the story and the audience.

You know, it's funny: there are never any middle-aged souls. You hear about people being young souls, you really hear about old souls, but what about middle-aged souls?

Why have a pet hate? Why should it be confined? My hate is both wide ranging and total.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Or just Listen (if you paid attention the first time).

I don't know that I brood. I just occasionally take time out to silently consider the specific ways in which others have wronged me.

I don't know how to be myself. It's like I'm permanently outside myself. Like, like you could push your hands straight through me if you wanted to. And I can see the type of man I want to be versus the type of man I actually am and I know that I'm doing it but I'm incapable of what needs to be done. I'm like Pinocchio, a wooden boy. Not a real boy. And it kills me.

I like Roy Orbison's video for 'I Drove All Night' because it's so literal. It is just a man driving throughout the night. I like that silliness. To be in a video is a ridiculous thing. It's almost impossible to do it without any humour.