Top 30 Jared Harris Quotes

When you’re playing someone who drinks a lot, it’s not that interesting to play that condition because as soon as you know that, you got all the information you’re going to get from it. It’s like hitting the same note on the piano over and over again.

I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.

I’ve done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though – come on, it’s brilliant. I love a good death scene!

I met Peter O’Toole for the first time at Dad’s memorial service because my Dad didn’t hang around with people like that when we were around. We didn’t grow up with Richard Burton coming around to tea.

It’s odd, because ‘Mad Men’ was the first long-form TV thing I ever did. I’d done loads of independent movies, but after that, it was ‘TV actor.’ You go, ‘When did that happen? Everything else has been erased?’

Very few movies I’ve done I regret being involved in.

I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they’re having a shower. It’s fun.

People are fascinated by evil because it’s mysterious and it doesn’t seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I’d been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn’t wait to get out.

I personally am not religious. I think, put into the wrong hands, it’s incredibly dangerous. It’s the reason for most of the wars that have been fought around the world, and it’s pretty ridiculous when you think about what they’re actually arguing over.

I like challenges.

I’ve auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

You can’t love someone unless they love you back.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn’t know anybody and they didn’t know me I could start all over again.

If you’re involved in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself.

I wasn’t aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children’s entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I’d say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, ‘oh, is he Ralph Harris?’ And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

You always hope that people will fall in love with the characters you play, the way you do yourself.

The person you’re playing must have feelings, but if he’s not able to show them, then just the subtlest rumblings and nuances can say an incredible amount.

Dad was never a Mr. Mum-type of person who’d stay at home. It was a big thing when he was home – he was a circus.

Pink cocktails look quite friendly. They have an umbrella in them, some sort of fruit… they look innocent, and boy, do they pack a punch.

After ‘Mad Men,’ I got offered various types of uptight Englishmen, which I wasn’t interested in doing. I didn’t want to repeat myself.

When you’re acting and you need to cry, you want to put yourself in a position where you’re trying not to cry, because that is generally what people try and do. They try to hold on to their emotions, they don’t want to lose them.

You get ideas from other people all the time.

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.

One of the reasons why good actors are good is that they have poor impulse control. If you put them in front of a camera, they respond as if it was actually happening, in real time, rather than doing it after several takes.

Male actors have to lie about their ages, too.

It’s very hard to connect with a character when you haven’t gotten a sense of who they are.

Matt Weiner is an amazing writer. He’s one of the best, greatest writers that’s ever written for television – or just written.

I miss ‘Mad Men,’ but I can’t complain because I got a lot of public awareness from it, and it led on to film offers such as ‘Sherlock.’

I really wanted to get out of England.