Top 25 Christopher Eccleston Quotes

I’ve never been up with the times, always been slightly out of step.

I don’t see a lot of films. I’m quite choosy, but there’s certain films that stick out.

Twelve years on sets watching directors, I’ve taken a bit from everybody and rejected a lot.

I don’t like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

I care more about telly because it made me an actor and there’s a much more immediate response to TV. You can address the political or cultural fabric of your country.

I had to help to coax the performances and I really enjoyed that extra responsibility.

I only ever worked on interiors, and an interior is an interior. I don’t know what they did about exteriors.

Television, although It’s in steep decline, still occasionally gives voices to people who don’t have voices.

I went being unemployed for three years to being the lead in a British feature in the days when we only made two a year, 1990. It was ridiculous really.

I used my instincts. It’s very easy to imagine how you’d feel, actually. I just had to tell the narrative.

I want to direct but I think I’d be bloody awful and I don’t want to produce but I think I’d be a very good producer because if I believed in something I’d be able to protect it.

I think film and television are really a director’s medium, whereas theatre is the actor’s medium.

Jacobean plays, before Shakespeare, were particularly visceral.

The person who gives you your first job is so important in any industry.

The film is about Joe discovering who his mother and father are and his relationship with them, and the identity crisis he goes through once he finds out who his parents are.

Lots of middle class people are running around pretending to be Cockney.

Many times I’ve sat with a camera and another actor and seen all their fears and insecurities and struggles. You want to support them and help them as much as you can.

I heard the various terms of abuse at school and probably indulged them in the way you do as a kid.

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down’s Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.

I know exactly where I’ve come from, I know exactly who my mum and dad are.

I wasn’t always such a great fan of Shakespeare, mind you. I can guess we all at one time had it rammed down our necks at school, which tends to take the edge off it.

Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn’t for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.

Rather than disliking theatre, I’ve expressed a preference for television because it tends to deal in its small way much more with issues and is able to reach a broader church of people than theatre.

I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.

We all need a firm sense of identity.