Samuel Barnett Quotes

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.

You can find more traditional Shakespeare than we do. But what we want to bring to these works is energy, passion, freshness.

Shakespeare language is fantastic, and to be honest, you don't need to do anything to Shakespeare.

I don't do Shakespeare. I don't talk in that kind of broken English.

I find Shakespeare terrifying. When Simon Russell Beale does a speech, I understand every word of it, but if I did the same speech, people would be going, 'Huh? What?'

I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.

Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

Having spent so much of my life with Shakespeare's world, passions and ideas in my head and in my mouth, he feels like a friend - someone who just went out of the room to get another bottle of wine.

Unless you're doing Shakespeare or Chekhov... the written word is not sacrosanct.

Shakespeare's work is like a good song: you never really forget the main lines.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.

My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

My earliest influence was Shakespeare - I read Shakespeare incessantly as a kid.

It doesn't seem Shakespeare works if you turn him into a religion.

By all means, let us study the great writers of the past for their own sakes, but let us study them for our guidance: that we, in our turn, having (it is to be hoped) something to say in our span of time, say it worthily, not dwindling out the large utterance of Shakespeare or of Burke.

I was fired from my first job in New York. I was just out of school, doing the Welsh play, 'The Corn Is Green,' at Equity Library Theater. I was studying with Uta Hagen, and I was really working well, but they got nervous. They wanted results right away. We had a run-through, and I wasn't there yet, so they fired me.

I went to school to be an actor in Canada and realized I hated auditions once I left, which is a huge problem if you want to get a part.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

Auditioning is always so different for different things.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

When you turn up for work, especially with looking down the barrel of a show, you're hoping the person you're acting opposite of is going to be on your kind of crazy wavelength.

Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.

James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to learn Shakespeare, so I went to Stratford. It really sorts out the men from the boys.