British Acting Quotes

The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day.

I think there's a quality of passion to the American actor. I'm certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the mechanical and intellectual process is dominant in the British.

I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.

I'm not really into method acting - the way I was taught was the good old-fashioned British way of just doing your research and getting on with it.

Everyone the world over talks about British actors and British talent and I think that's because we were trained - until now - in theatre.

British acting is undoubtedly based in text, and American acting relies more on behavior. That's speaking very generally.

One of the hallmarks that a British actor brings to his public persona is an adept sense of self-deprecation - see Daniel Craig and Damian Lewis.

It sounds funny, but I felt that my responsibility as an American actor was to let the British know we can act as well as they can.

There's a particularly British way of going about things that I rather like, which is very different to the American way. It comes out of the amateur rep tradition of actors thinking: 'Well, I'm only 26, but I'll put on a beard and have a go at King Lear.'