Tom Hollander Quotes

The only time I get sick of making people laugh is when I'm in a non-writing-joke mode, and I just can't seem to come up with anything new that's funny. That's a tough place to be as a comedian.

I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'

As comedians, we have the opportunity to convey a message that will have an effect. The best can make you laugh and cry, the way musicians and actors can.

Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed.

I used to feel this need to prove to people that I can do something dramatic. But, the truth is that I don't know if I can. I don't think I have it in my skill set. It would be great, but I do love making comedies. It's been so much fun for me, and I hope that I can continue to do it.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

With comedy, you have to do it right. In a drama, there's a lot of different ways to succeed in a moment. But comedy comes from reality. You can't try to be funny.

I wanted to be like an actor or a comedian for a little while, because I was always wanting to make people laugh, and being stupid, so I never thought I'd be doing a job where you always have to look nice, and polished and sophisticated.

Comedy is more difficult. You can look at scenes when you're doing a drama like, “Maybe it works,” but in comedy, when you're doing it, either it works or it doesn't. You have to keep doing it until it does, and the requirement is more.

sometimes in comedy you can make the audience feel poignancy stronger than you can with tears or anguish.

I'm more focused or try to be more focused on my acting and writing and comedy and let the other stuff fall where it may.

I always loved acting, but it's weird to think what I'd be doing if this hadn't come around. It's kind of a bit of a fluke how I got into it, so I'm grateful.

Stand-up is a real art form in itself and one that I really think to be good at you have to devote your entire life to. It's the really, really good ones that end up getting to do the things that I like to do: movies, TV shows, and stuff like that. It's a really hard gig and it just never called to me.

Comedy doesn't come easy for me. I've only done 2 movies that are really comedy-style films and I have to work at them. And they're just as scary in a way. I hate labeling all these things; comedy, love stories, dark drama, whatever.

Drama is this incredibly vulnerable thing, but with comedy, you have to have a sense of rhythm and be very sensitive to the pace of things.

I would like to work in both comedy and drama. I'd love to do a really juicy drama that's just really real.

I'm paid to make an idiot out of myself. Why do you do it for free?

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

I have some speakers up here, thank God, because last night I didn't have them and I was telling jokes and I had no idea which joke I was telling. So I told jokes twice. I even told that one twice.

After a while some of the houseguests at Big Brother can become a little bit high maintenance so they're going to find everything to be irritating. We don't really try to show it on the show. How interesting is that? But we can make a funny story out of it when they complain, complain, complain.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

There are many different ways of being funny. I'm not sure that there's so many different ways of being dramatic.

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for.

If you're trying to make something funny, and it doesn't feel like you're always getting something, it doesn't have quite a lot of joy.