Derek Jacobi Quotes

I don't think it was a surprise that I ended up as an actor, and it was anything but a disappointment.

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

I think acting is a gift.

I mean everyone, from Al Pacino to Murphy Guyer, are phenomenal actors.

I'm kind of a jack of all trades. I have played all kinds of roles in the theater.

My favorite actor is Sir Ben Kingsley - nobody is as good as him, in my opinion. I think he's so good as an artist.

Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.

I love live theater; I like the relationship between the show and the audience. That's my comfort zone, but more than anything, it's what makes me happy.

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.

I love to act, I love to sing and I love to entertain, so if I am passionate about a certain project and I want to do it, I hope to stretch my acting skills.

Lotte Lenya was all emotion. She wasn't anything but emotion. She was not an intellectual.

I love actors, and I'm passionate about the creative process of acting and filmmaking.

Theater in Chicago will always be my first love.

I started out as a very traditional actor. The first thing I ever did in terms of performance was singing.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

For me, because I've had classical theater training, when people say, "Oh, my god, the play is amazing!," I'll never get to see it because I'm in it.

He was so good at everything he did. You can't call Ronnie Barker a comedian. He was an actor, and a great writer.

Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.

When I was about 16, I did a Neil LaBute play called 'A Gaggle of Saints' from a collection of plays called 'Bash' - very violent story about a young Mormon who goes to Central Park with his friend and beats up a gay guy. But it was the first thing I had ever done, and I thought, "God, this is fun! This is far more fun than anything else I've been doing at school. I want to stick with it."

Once I started taking drama classes, I asked myself why I had ever wasted so much time on a football team.

I like producing but acting is the quintessential me, and I'm probably better at that than I am at anything. My heart has always been in the movies.

I think sometimes people haven't really quite worked out how to peg me, or exactly what it is that I do. In that way, I feel lucky that I can get to play different things because they haven't quite decided what I am.

It was my life, playing Juliet. From that moment on I was convinced I was going to be an actress. That was all I really wanted to do.

My path was to be an actor and it’s been very good to me in life. It’s broadened my horizons and given me a lot of gifts.