Richard Armitage Quotes

That's the thing about prep, is that it's a joy to have it there and you can spend all this time prepping, but ultimately you have to look at your script and turn up on the day. It's embedded in there somewhere but you have to forget it all and play the scene because we are storytelling.

For me, when working on a film or play or television show, everything for me starts with the screenplay and I am devoted to that and that is what I work from. Any research I do or any preparation I do on my own is all ultimately in service of that.

I have problems with the violence and the torture on '24.' What I'm trying to say is that that's not the only story, and I think that the cognitive complexity is as important.

A little bit of gratuitous violence in a well-thought-out story is fine.

I'm not interested in going and doing a big, action-adventure romp with nothing to say about being a human being.

Each of the 'Toy Story's are telling an emotional story, but they're comedic. They're so successful creatively in terms of the stories they're telling. And they're pretty grounded.

We have more than enough deodorised, over-the-top, sentimental cinema. Let's try to bring a little human intelligence into things. It can be very rewarding.

As fun as it is to be the nerdy best friend. I'm capable of more than that, and I feel that I have emotions to share, and there are roles I can add something to. I just hope there are other people who are willing to take that chance on me and let me tell their stories.

Thank God sci-fi has moved away from spaceships fighting aliens! Now it's a place where you can explore contemporary issues or emotional feelings. You can put it all in a different setting.

Independent films are really the best ones out there. They're the most original stories, and they're very good.

Movies have heart. Have mind. Have power. Have ambition.

I don't think that people think of Marvel in the same way that people think of Pixar. Because Pixar is story-orientated, and they think of these guys as epic movie orientated. But they're story-orientated. That's the secret.

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.

I play enough other mad people, as well and some sane people, to vary the palette of what's scrabbling around in my head and soul to bring to the floor, as a storyteller.

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.

I think that any good storytelling lends itself to closing a chapter but also knowing that there's a few more volumes beyond that to dream off of.

PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

I usually make up stories for my kids.I like to tell them stories and make up any kind of crazy to involve them in characters. The kind of fairytales I don't like are the ones with happy endings, where there's just good and evil and things are perfect. I think when there's a good story for children it has a moral tale, so that's what I try to teach my kids.

You know when a script is good but you don't have any knowledge how visually it is going to look. When this [Happy Valley] came out and I saw the first episode and thought it was terrific.

I just always look for stuff that has a character-driven thing.

I just want to make sure that the thing that I see in it initially, that I think it can be, is not just going to be a horror film and reduced to a jump here and a scream there. But that you can take something away from it.

If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death.