Gary Oldman Quotes

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.

My writing is not just all facts and voices. I strive to create a text that works as a sign, pointing out undercurrents that lie beneath the facts.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.

I think the most important thing for an actor is reading the script and trying to figure out if you can play that character well. The last thing on my mind is if the director made good movies previously. It's not my job to know if that director's last movie was any good - it's my job to know if I can play the role.

For people who know McQueen, there is always an underlying message. It's usually only the intellectual ones who understand what's going on in what I do.

I don't want to bury anything in poetry.

I like shows or films or books that have messages but don't beat people over the head with them.

I'm not what you'd call a Method actor.

I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.

You have to get it in your brain that you don't belong to yourself as an actor, but that you belong to the director who creates the character.

For 'A Little Night Music,' I did try to get little bit more beefed up for that because I thought that would help me carry myself around the stage in that character.

And it's interesting, but I'm always interested in the story behind the story.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

I guess because you study the character and you do all those things. But when it comes down to it, it's still my performance, it's still my interpretation. I'm not going to, you know, be a clone - well, I was a clone of Richard Dean Anderson!

There is no first-hand account of what the Queen was saying or thinking, so my job as an actor is to interpret her circumstances.

I have the feeling that all stories travel with an understory.

In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.

An actor doesn't change thought, theme, or mood unless the character does, and the character only does it within the words of the play.

The audience basically likes complex characters, and bringing out the complexities is the actor's job. The audience doesn't have the script, the actor does.

The skill of a gifted actor, their ability to interpret and develop a character and truly bring her or him to life, is one that I admire enormously.