Top 25 Anne-Marie Duff Quotes

I suppose it’s whether you want to be a famous person, or whether you want to be an actor. You have to decide what your priorities are. Great actor, huge star. Sometimes, the two walk hand in hand. Most of the time, they don’t.

I admire people who overcome obstacles or who have to commit – I’ve always really admired commitment, whether it be a commitment to living or a commitment to love. People who commit to a moment. People who are not somewhere else, but in the room with you.

I’m not a great beauty. That’s not me.

I don’t look like Catherine Zeta-Jones, so I don’t think Hollywood would be that interested in me, to be honest. I just want nice work.

In theatre, there’s the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it’s the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me.

The experience of having a child does crack you wide open. I felt like I suddenly had to rebuild the skin that I’d grown over the years before having a child. Perhaps that might be quite interesting in terms of acting.

I think creative people need to do a bit of, you know, tuning into every radio station – you just do, otherwise you don’t know much about other people. You kind of have to learn a bit about yourself so you can work out how we all behave and why we do the things we do.

The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.

Healthy love, I always think, is… wanting the person you love to be more of themselves. And I think for a parent that’s a challenge, because you have to let a baby spread its wings.

Any kind of conflict draws me to a role.

I sometimes think it’s like a weird elastic band. The more tragic your work is, the quicker you snap back. There’s a catharsis in telling a miserable old tale; you get rid of demons.

Nothing is more diminishing than trying to control success or hold on to things.

I’m a right pain in the hole for my agent. I won’t take certain parts if I think they’re offensive or banal. For instance, I won’t do a film if I think it’s full of violence for violence’s sake, or a television drama if I don’t think it’s intelligent writing.

I didn’t have a teen age at all. I didn’t even look at boys, never mind… then suddenly it was like, ‘Oh my god!’ So I made up for a lot of lost time very quickly. It was kind of bonkers. Working hard, partying hard – but also experiencing life, you know.

You can’t worry too much about profile; otherwise, you become a different kind of actor, and that’s not the kind of actor I want to be.

That’s the trouble with the suburbs: it’s not a city, so you’re not anonymous, and it’s not a small town, so that people really care about you, but everybody kind of knows each other’s business, so you’re very judged.

People can be a bit flagrant when they’re having an affair. Most of the time, there’s an element of it where they want to be discovered because they’re in crisis. They need the boil to be burst, in some way, for a resolution.

I’ve been shocked by film actors – 25 and under – having such confidence and cockiness to rewrite a scene. My background is more about the director being in control. It’s all about yielding. It’s an oddly submissive relationship in which you’re moulded, Pygmalion-style.

I am very lucky. I have known wonderful romantic love in my life but to actually see this little creature and find him to be the most beautiful creature in the world. I know all mothers and fathers feel that way.

Your heart… it’s a very fragile muscle. You have to take care of it, be old-fashioned about it.

I didn’t really inhabit myself until I was in my 30s. And motherhood is an epic event. You can’t help but be altered by it – and it is important to be.

That’s the thing – you do a job like ‘Shameless,’ and suddenly that’s why you can get a job like ‘The Virgin Queen’, not because of all the classical theatre you’ve done. But we can be very snippy about television. It’s absolutely the most potent and powerful form of storytelling we have.

I remember I was unsure about doing ‘Shameless.’ I’d never acted in anything so commercial. I read the script in the garden with my mum, Mary. She said it’s filthy dirty, but she said these people have love and sex and nothing else. That made me take the role.

There are people out there with three jobs and small children. Being an actor is a walk in the park compared to working as a cleaner overnight. I’m lucky I’m not plucking chickens.

There are some roles you just don’t say ‘no’ to. Those compass points: you get them so rarely as an actress.