Stephen Rea Quotes

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.

People often refer to my career before The Crying Game as something which led up to that point. But I was very fulfilled in what I was doing.

I have never been to a brothel. I don't think I could go into one.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

The End of the Affair is a good movie because it about things, things that really matter. Love, sex, death. Have you ever seen romance?

I think great art is always ambiguous and can't be pinned down.

I never watch TV. I know I'm missing so much, aren't I? I'm probably not. I can't stand popular TV. I've got too much to do to watch it. I know that sounds pretentious and pompous, but there you are.

The worst thing for an actor is a director that gets on your nerves and says things that actually confuse you.

At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division of the country.

I'd like to own a movie camera - a proper one, with film, not a digital thing. Celluloid has more character.

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

Angel was the first Irish feature film. Neil's first movie and my first movie.

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.