Re-Enactment Quotes

History repeats itself, first as history, then as farce.

When we went to Judy Davis and said, 'We want you to play Judy Garland in the mini-series 'Life With Judy Garland,' she was shocked, but we just had an instinct about her.

No actor wants to play someone else's performance.

When you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.

Ali reversed the decision in a second fight with Joe Frazier. That's what would happen if I played Billie Jean again.

In films, there is no scope to rectify any mistake... but in theatre, you can rectify it the next day.

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.

During 'Manchurian Candidate' - that role originated with Laurence Harvey, and I studied everything he did. I would never be able to reproduce that performance, but I got a lot of ideas from watching it.

The Kate Winslet thing has been a shocker. I was like, that is the most ridiculous claim. Amazing, obviously. She's been my idol since I re-enacted 'Titanic' and fell in love with Leo. And it's a privilege to be called the next anything. But I suppose to be the next you is all you can do.

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.

If someone has already done a role I'm about to do, I won't watch the original until after I'm finished playing the role.

As actors, that has been challenging for us to pick up the nuances of the living legends we are playing.

'Monuments Men' is not a docudrama. It's not a documentary.

It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.

It is quite surreal having a film made about your life. The whole process of turning real life into drama is interesting in itself, but even more so when it is your own life being put into the narrative forge.

I was actually in a Take That tribute band.

People have said, 'You don't need to do any more biopics. You don't need to play any more real people.' I don't agree with that.

The roles that I always get attracted to are roles where the material is based on an actual person.

History has repeated itself many times througout the ages.

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction.

History repeats itself–the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

I didn't want to see George Hamilton playing me, I wanted the real thing.

I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.

In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse.