Jonny Lee Miller Quotes

People should be shrouded in mystery. Especially actors. No, hang on, maybe actors should be blown up.

As an actor, we spend so much putting the mask on and trying to be someone you're not.

In my work, I want to convince people that I'm that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville - private life, all of that stuff - it doesn't help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.

I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.

Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on.

Everyone thinks Lily Allen is this brash, bold, funny person. It was all just a bit of a facade and bravado.

The less people know about me in reality, the more they can accept of me as a character.

The less someone knows about me, the better, because my intention is to play a variety of characters.

I actually got reprimanded by Stevie Nicks, who was like, 'You're sharing too much! You need to leave an air of mystery.'

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

In my industry, everybody wants to know everything about you, and it's just dumb. I think the only way of maintaining some of that mystique is by not giving away too much about yourself. It has served me well so far. I never want to feel up for grabs.

It's easier to play quirky characters and hide behind wardrobe and make-up, especially.

On the red carpet, I'm playing a character. As soon as I get off that thing, I think, 'Oof, wipe that gloss off.' I'm wiping and wiping and pulling my hair out and trying to change my outfit. I'm immediately trying to get comfortable. It's really a part I play.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them.

I love different roles, just getting into it, something that's the complete opposite of who I am.

When your life changes and you become a more public person, in some ways you need to be a more closed person, you know?

You project a version of yourself to the public to protect and insulate yourself a little bit. Actors come up with a version of themselves in order to protect the real person.

The less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen.

When I present those clip shows and movie mistakes and things, the persona the writers adopt for me is unimpressed, superior, very sarcastic - I'm not any of that. I can do it, but that's not what I'm like.

I'm standing behind a wall of jokes. You don't know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I'm not on the road. There's this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don't know anything about me.

Nixon's pretense was to be less than he was—less thoughtful, less introverted, less skeptical and analytical, less cerebral—to present himself deliberately as an Average American: patriotic, conventionally religious and responsible, gregarious, sports-loving, hardworking and hard-nosed.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

I only like people to know what I want them to know. People didn't know what Tupac was doing. That's why he was so iconic.

Sometimes it's nice as an actress just to keep something back about yourself so there's a little bit of mystery.

I step into a character in my public life. People who don't make that distinction are dooooomed.