Richard Coles Quotes

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

The whole thing about working in front of the camera is to make people laugh when they're not supposed to.

I like drama as well. When I played Hamlet, I got one review that said, "This must surely be the funniest Hamlet in history," but schoolgirls would still cry when he died.

I trained in Shakespeare, and that's all comedy, even when it's tragedy.

I've never really had a desire to do Shakespeare. For me, it's just too many lines.

I don't fool myself. I can't see myself doing Shakespeare.

During my theatre days, I was more comfortable doing comedy. It's such an irony. I have always played a buffoon on stage, and yet I don't have any comic role to my credit.

I remember thinking, when I was playing Hedda Gabler, that several sequences of the play were utterly absurd.

You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!

I think people tend to feel odd when I do my act. Unless you are an ironic person, it's not a good place for you to be.

Hamlet, that's the only role there is, finally. The only role. After that, you settle down and only do the fun things on stage.

Actors die so loud.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

When I was younger, I would go to auditions to have the opportunity to audition, which would mean another chance to get up there and try out my stuff, or try out what I learned and see how it worked with an audience, because where are you gonna get an audience?

Rhythm and timing are so important in comedic acting.

Ultimately, we're actors: I'm putting on a costume, so we're playing pretend.

Sometimes you go to a show, and you see someone and think they're not there right now. They're performing, but it's muscle memory. There is no memorising some of the ways we put on a show.

When I go on stage and perform, I'm an extreme version of myself.

I talked to friends who are actors and who do Shakespeare loads, and they all said 'learn it so that your family wants to clobber you, they're so bored.' You can never relax, that's the problem, because when you do, a bit of Shakespeare comes up to bite your cheeky behind. It just does, if you're not really focused on it.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

In movies, comedy and tragedy are all the same.

But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy.

I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.