Tom Ellis Quotes

You read a lot of pilots during pilot season, and not all of them really grab you.

I look for scripts that give me a gut feeling that this is going to work.

I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.

The only thing that we as actors really can control is to be able to say 'yes' or 'no' to the material.

You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.

Every script has things that would draw me away or draw me towards it. But I just try and choose as wisely as possible - when I get to choose.

Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn't going to work.

I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff.

I'd read a lot of scripts, and I remember reading 'Orange Is the New Black,' and it was at the head of the pack. I remember thinking, 'Wow, that is really good. I would love to be a part of that.'

If I read a script and find it engaging and I start making choices in my mind on how to approach the work, than that's a good indication that it is something worth pursuing.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

You read a million scripts during pilot season, and most of them are not very good, so the good ones really shine.

The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.

My dad's got a brilliant eye for scripts 'cos he's a literary agent. He and my agent read a load of scripts and filter them.

You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.

I am very instinctive. When I read a script, I think, 'Is this something I would want to watch?'

My parameter of judging a script has not changed over the years. I still go for a script where the story interests me. Yes, there are times where I might go wrong; say, out of five scripts, I might go wrong on one.

When it comes to scripts, I take a critical look at them and then sound it off with Dad.

When you get scripts and you really enjoy reading them, you know it's a good project.

You read a script, and you know if you need to do it.

For all the hundreds of scripts that are out there, there's not that many that are amazing.

As a family, we ensure we sit together and listen to scripts. But the choice of doing a film is entirely mine.

I am very selective when it comes to scripts.

I wait and see what scripts come my way and then try and make a decision within the choices that I'm offered. I see what turns up, and if it's something I'd really rather not do, or I think it's too similar to something I've just done, I'll wait and hope for something else.

When I listen to scripts, I never ask who my co-star is - instead, I ask about the characters and the producers of the particular venture.