Ricky Gervais Quotes

Everywhere I go now, people are like, 'That's the guy from 'Dancing With the Stars!' It's pretty good that you're not just a football player but you're in the entertainment world.

A guy playing pool in a pub once said to me that they should put me on the telly. It went in one ear and out the other. But then I started thinking about it. I wondered how it all worked, did you have to be best mates with someone at the BBC who you went to uni with in Oxford?

Whether it happens over 10 years, like with a lot of people, or with one hit movie that thrusts you into that world, when you become successful as an actor, you become well known. In the end game, that's just part of the business.

It's bizarre, that feeling as an actor, at being in the mecca of the film world and seeing billboards for a TV show that you're in pretty much everywhere.

I don't have many famous friends, really, except Simon Cowell.

Both my parents said they never got so many emails from friends and colleagues - with all the theater work that I've done - than when I was on 'The Good Wife.'

I know that everyone wants to know about 'Downton Abbey,' but the truth is that it was only a few days out of my life. Still, you play a distinctive part on a hit series, and everyone suddenly knows who you are. Isn't it crazy how this business works?

With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.

You're not anyone in America unless you're on TV.

My dream was to be a celebrity, to be on TV like Bob Hope was.

I like that guy Matthew Perry a lot.

I've never dreamt of being on TV; I had never tried to be in the entertainment business at all.

It's one of the best parts of being on the 'Real Housewives' and why I love it: getting to talk to so many great people.

I would watch 'the Kardashians' and think, I could do that.

I looked at 'Us Weekly' and said, 'I want to be famous.'

There's so much, I guess I want to say, nonsense about show business now. Because of reality television. I don't get this, because I was never raised to get this, but I don't understand wanting to be famous. Maybe it's because I was born famous, but I don't get it.

Someday I'm gonna be famous. Do I have talent, well, no. These days you really don't need it.

The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!

There are so many people who want to be the next person on 'Home and Away,' or they just want to be on the cover of a magazine, and they don't really understand the craft. They're not interested in theatre, they're not interested in the art.

It's hard to bury your head in Los Angeles. People come up to you and say, 'Hey, I saw your picture on a bus.' It's tricky: You're excited by the possibilities, but you don't want to get too crazy.

In our society, everyone wants to be a celebrity overnight.

I'm just a guy who happens to work in public from time to time. I've built a reputation as an established comic, not as a celebrity - a celebrity is someone who is famous but doesn't do anything.

The strangest part about being famous is you don't get to give first impressions anymore. Everyone already has an impression of you before you meet them.

The hardest part of fame and success is adapting to the people around you that's changing. It changes the way people look at you from how they used to look at you. They listen to you on the radio, they look at you on TV and when people speak on you in a good light, you have a couple people who hold grudges.

You think a lot of people get to be big stars and get a little crazy, but most of the ones I've ever met have always been surprisingly normal, and I've enjoyed that.