Stephen Graham Quotes

I was 10, and I played Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island' at school, and this great Liverpudlian actor called Andrew Schofield - he was Johnny Rotten in 'Sid And Nancy' - came to watch it, and he had a word with my mum and dad afterwards and told them I should have a go at the Everyman youth theatre. I've never looked back.

I'm a mixed race lad from Liverpool. I get to play a lot of hard characters, and some people perceive that's what I'm like, but it's great for me 'cos they're always the most interesting characters.

When I was 27, I didn't have a clue what was going on! At that age, to have that much power and to have that much ambition is something.

If I get the walk of a character, that helps me find them. So I'm constantly looking at airports and train stations, registering walks.

As you sit on the hillside,
or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

College is the only place where you can rebel by doing exactly what people in authority tell you to do.

There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.

I was going to become a youth worker because I do voluntary work with the kids in the little village where I live. I make little films with them and stuff when I'm not working. I thought, I'll pack it in then, and go and do something I love doing, and get a regular job because I've got two kids and a mortgage.

There is scarcely a town or school in Russia from which boys have not run away to the war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and tried to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volunteers, and several have got through, since the medical examination is only a negligible formality required in one place, forgotten in another.

I like how TV used to be - 'Boys from the Blackstuff' and 'Play for Today', instead of 'Stars in Your Eyes' and 'Celebrity Come Cook With Me' or whatever. I hate all that stuff.

...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you year toward the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of travel and of facts; but something else will be entering into it, poetry, the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life, you are learning the gentle art of tramping, and it is giving you an artist's joy in creation.

Don't let anybody ever tell you life's fair. Not as long as I'm in it.

I'm drawn to dramas that make people think. I want to make an impact.

I did 'Gangs of New York' with Martin Scorsese, and they used to call me 'Little Joe Pesci' on the set.

No Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen.

I work to live, not live to work, so my head's at home, not in some showbiz life.

There has to be something that I like about a character for me to be able to play him.

There are moments when you're stepping out of a really nice car on to a red carpet, and you feel inside like, 'This is quite nice,' but I'm never whisked off my feet.

Life is not a chain of events but an area-something spreading out from a hidden centre and welling at once toward all points of the compass.

People in New York are surprised when I open my mouth.

Mum and Dad always wanted me to do whatever I was happy doing. I nearly went to art college at 16, but decided to do a BTEC in performing arts.

I wouldn't rule out L.A. life, but I love England. I have a lovely house and nice garden, I walk my kids to school - family is most important to me.