James McAvoy Quotes

It's kind of hard to enjoy the film when you are watching yourself the whole time. But you do get on with it and try and appreciate everything else about the movie. At least that's what I do. It depends on how fresh in my memory the whole experience is.

It's hard to understand the films that you're in, because you never truly get to see them.

When I go to see something I'm in, or my friends are in, it's like a home movie. When I just go to the movies and don't know anyone in it, then it's a real movie.

It is very hard to separate one's self from a character. Sometimes the people closest to me have to be very understanding.

I get emotionally attached with every film I do, and that stops me from being critical. I can't fight my emotions.

I never really try to watch the movie of the things I've been in.

No, I feel like my personality probably influenced the character, more than the character influenced me.

I had always been intrigued by the emotional aspect of adventure gaming-the fact that people get so personally involved.

As an actor, you're not kind of thinking about your own work or watching the movie for the first time.

I would rather not watch myself in movies. I enjoy the experience, but I won't really see the film until they're on cable deep on into my life so I can pretend it's someone else at another time.

I can't draw a line between myself and stuff that I do. It's funny, I don't want to sound like it's just about this, but really with everything I do, it's hard for me to take myself out of it.

It's the difference between watching a football game between two teams you don't care about, and watching a game where you have some kind of personal identity with one of the teams, if only a huge bet.

Maybe that's partly why I'm an actor, I'm a fairly empathetic, emotional person, so I get very, very involved when it's really, really great when I'm watching - so it takes me a second to click back into reality again.

One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.

I am very critical! I hate watching myself but I know I have to because I'm going to be asked so I need to have some sort of semblance of what the films with me are like. But it's not an enjoyable experience watching yourself. I hate it less than I used to but I still don't enjoy it.

Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.

You have to have a personal connection. You have to really want to do it, because if you don't, investing yourself personally, your thoughts, your emotions, yourself into a part, is something you're not going to want to do as much.

. . . All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

Your opinions are your symptoms.

That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed."

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower

All that matters is how you see yourself.

You end up loving every character that you play but a lot of the people I've played, I should just say for myself, I played, I wouldn't necessarily want to continue playing them. I've done them. It's like going on a trip. You go, you're amazed, you're glad you're there but you're glad to get home. And that's how I feel most of the time.