Tim Bevan Quotes

Oh yeah, I'm an Essex boy and proud of it.

In England we only make films about the working class or the aristocracy.

Why do British people make such good TV? It's so annoying. Stop it. Is it because they have free health care? Uggh.

I'd grown up loving English films. I was a huge Monty Python fanatic as a kid.

Because of England's lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.

The Full Monty, ah, it's superb. The Full Monty showed how life really is in certain cities of England.

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.

British period drama is always seen as kind of perfect and beautiful and lovely, but I don't think subcultures have been shone a light on like 'Peaky Blinders' has done.

I love British television. I love the irony, I love the authenticity and I love the roles I get put up for.

I think there's a tendency in England, when you look at the past, to either have upper middle class period drama with its own rules, or if you're going to look at working class people, you have to do that in a particular 'Isn't it a shame, aren't they oppressed' way, or it's treated comically.

In Britain, when the working class are summoned for fiction, it's 'isn't it a shame, isn't it a pity, isn't it awful, the terribly poor things... ' whereas from within, it's nothing like that. It's fantastic, it's glamorous, it's terrible and good the same as it is for everybody.

We concentrate too much on ethnic diversity and not enough on class. It's dead important to represent loads of different cultures. But what the BBC doesn't do enough of is thinking about getting people from more working-class backgrounds.

Woodfall wasn't deliberately telling working-class stories, but John Osborne and other writers who were involved with them were writing those stories, which had never really been written before. The working-class person always had to have an accent before, was often a joker, and peripheral. At Woodfall, they were driving the film.

In the U.K., working-class lives are depicted with the characters' humour, but in the U.S., people with difficulties are often depicted with pious or simply dreary lives.

Ironically, there isn't much comedy film in Britain, which is quite surprising seeing that we're quite good at it.

Houston is kind of a melting pot. There are many different cultures and ethnicities represented out there, even on my team. It's really cool: you'll see so many different things.

I don't think films about working class people are sad at all; I think they're funny and lively and invigorating and warm and generous and full of good things.

Of course, I have been influenced by my Punjabi and Hariyanvi roots.

We've grown up with American movies. Not to say that American movies - or movies that have been based in Watts, Compton, or Inglewood - are a 100% true depiction of that world. But also you have inner-city London, and the foundations are pretty much the same. Especially me, growing up in Southeast London, in Peckham.

I'm just an enormous British comedy fan.

I think one of the main differences between being an English actor and being an American actor is that we have things like the class system in England.I'm middle class. But I've got what some people might consider to be a working-class accent, so you've got those sorts of elements in this country to consider, which, in America, exist, but not necessarily in the same way.

I'm extremely proud of our very, very diverse cast which represents the world that I walk around in every day.

I feel responsible to my people to portray them the way we should be.

It was hard for an American to understand the contented acceptance by English men and women of permanent places in the lowest social rank.