Cecilia Dart-Thornton Quotes

When I was younger, I was always being told I had a period face, but 'Bel Ami' was my first shot at it.

With 'Anna Karenina,' I just think it's a stunning visual tour de force for a director who is at the top of his game.

I did 'Little Dorrit' a few years ago; I really love doing period dramas. It's stuff like that I really enjoy watching.

For Kitty Gilbert in 'Topsy-Turvy,' I had to get to the point where I could improvise in the style of 1880, which is difficult. The research for that was huge.

A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay.

The phone conversations about a possible TV series of 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' stretch back years, but now that the moment has come, now that I am actually here at Wentworth Woodhouse, I lose my bearings.

I've never finished anything by Dickens.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

Two of the first plays I saw after I arrived in Britain were 'King Lear' in Liverpool, and 'Antony and Cleopatra' at Stratford. One was produced with hardly a backdrop and the other with gigantic scene changes. I was impressed by what connected the two: the words and their life beyond the stage.

And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.

There were many films made for both cinema and television, and in general I don't connect them very much with our books. I have one favorite: 'The Man on the Roof' by director Bo Widerberg, which was based on 'The Abominable Man.'

With its vastly complicated plot and its immense cast of characters swirling around the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce that has been grinding away in the Court of Chancery for decades, 'Bleak House' is, for many readers, Dickens's greatest novel.

Everyone knows 'Smash' is about musical numbers, and everyone knows we have fantastic dance sequences and great performances.

I've done a lot of period stuff but that's mostly because, in England, we get off on a lot of period stuff, but it's not any kind of particular choice. That's where a lot of the work is.

I grew up around backstage, and that clinched it for me.

When I watch a film I get swept away. I don't really watch the camera.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

I like musicals that look more like plays.

I have a lot of things I want to do. I have a lot of fire. I want to do film. I want to do action movies. I want to do period pieces.

Working on 'Mad Men' was an incredible experience. It was such an incredible show with beautiful writing and so much complexity.

I have a lot of respect for the musical theater plays.

I've seen movies that are slavishly devoted to books but don't work because they haven't turned it into a movie: they've turned it into a dramatisation of the different scenes.

I love musicals more than anything.

I love musicals. When they work, there's nothing like it.

I'm obsessed with musicals.