Top 30 Nigel Hawthorne Quotes

I’m not looking at any stage stuff at all. I’m going to give that a break for a while, if not forever, because I’ve done a huge amount of stage stuff and if the possibility of working in pictures comes along, I’d be silly if I didn’t grab it.

As the years have gone by, I have become more confident, but I’m still not completely at ease with myself.

I think you start in middle life to recognize your vulnerabilities, if you’re lucky. You admit them and people find that interesting.

On the stage you can get away with imposing the emotions on yourself, but with film it really has to come from inside. It’s much more intense.

My father was a doctor. I’ve never been very warm towards doctors.

I used to get notes from directors, ‘Please, Nigel, smile at the curtain calls.’ I hate them so much.

If people crowd me too much, I can’t work.

The monarchy has almost always been unpopular.

If I hadn’t done ‘Shadowlands,’ which was a sort of emotional release for me as a person as well as an actor, it might have been less easy to have done ‘George III.’

I started to admit vulnerabilities and things that I was trying to hide before. Shyness, anxiety, guilt and all those things that I have in me are now quite freely shown.

It’s like the Boy Scouts’ motto, be prepared. You’ve got to be ready when the moment is offered. If you’re not, you can actually screw it up for life.

I had my doubts about ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ being successful in the U.S. because your system of government is so different than ours. But the show does seems to have a very good audience in the states.

I’m getting better, but I used to pull away from emotion, and from people.

I don’t have the vocal dexterity, nor do I have the desire to put myself in among the giants.

I really don’t like talking about me – me as me, that is. Me in relation to what I do is another matter. But me as me is boring.

Trevor and I had been going to awards ceremonies for years. People knew. Look, if you don’t get married by age 65, people know something’s up.

Ian McKellen always said I should come out. But why? I make my living playing heterosexuals.

Alan Bennett is a very quirkish man. He laughs in a self-effacing way, which stops you getting close. If you embrace him, he’ll laugh in an embarrassed way and pull away, not to shrug you off, but because he finds it awkward.

I can’t grumble. I’ve been very content with the way things have gone. I may have minor quibbles as we all have, but I’m still working at 70.

I live in the country, and I have a very happy life. I just do the job and go home.

I used to bury myself in character parts and put on a lot of makeup and use a lot of props. At first I thought it was clever to put on false noses and to do funny voices, but then I suddenly thought, no, that’s wrong, you don’t do it from the outside, you work from within.

I am 65 now and the world is just ahead of me at a time when most people are retiring.

I feel that too much fuss is made about being gay.

We’ve had other things come up in their place, but I don’t think’ anything beats morals.

When you set yourself up to be apart from rest of mankind, you’re in danger of crashing further than they ever could. That’s the trouble with royalty, after all.

I would never have told my father a lie. We were brought up to be very truthful. I would never lie today. It’s impossible.

I went into acting because I was hiding from myself, and although acting has become more of a habit now, I think I am still hiding.

My father was a Victorian product. He didn’t marry until he was over 40. I knew him more as a grandfather than a father. You didn’t lie or cheat with him. I would never have defied my father.

Clint Eastwood was a most delightful man to work with.

My whole career has been a struggle for dignity and justification, to prove that I’d made the right decision to be an actor in the first place.