Top 50 Rhys Ifans Quotes

I’m Welsh. We didn’t do ‘Peter Pan.’ We have far more ancient legends to be put to sleep with.

Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.

It’s every boy’s dream to play Captain Hook.

I am not gadgety at all. It’s not that I’m appalled by technology, but I’ve taken my time acquiring any of it.

If it is not scary, it is not worth doing.

I freely admit that I am a bit of a misfit.

My work is my way of expressing myself without being arrested.

I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.

In a sense, I feel a lot more an outsider in Los Angeles than I did in Newfoundland.

We’re in an age of enlightenment, and we have a choice as a society which path to take.

The whole film genre is one of deceit. It is the suspension of disbelief. That’s what all theater and all film is based on.

I don’t have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That’s what children do, and that’s what CGI enables us to do.

You know you are in a good film when it affects the audience.

There aren’t many odysseys in cinema for characters.

I’m a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can’t stop… then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, ‘Oh God, yeah, books!’

You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.

I just don’t buy the tabloids.

The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that.

Well, I need to be frightened on a regular basis.

It’s a great life being an actor, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare onstage, and I’m not convinced that the Earl of Oxford was the author of all those works, but I am convinced that the Stratfordian William Shakespeare was not. My feeling is that it was an amalgamation of many writers, in the same way that most films are a collaborative endeavor.

Club DJs don’t talk to the crowd.

Very often, actors have to face being rejected time and again, and we must remember that the red carpet lasts just a minute.

Don’t be late. Learn your lines. Be good to people. Treat people nice.

The strange thing is, if I was speaking to drama students about the thing that you should do if you’re lucky enough to know or to meet the character that you’re playing, I’d say, ‘It’s obvious: you quiz them diligently about their experience.’

As a Welsh speaker, I’m very conscious of how activism can effect real change.

All punk rockers hate Christmas.

I’m always flabbergasted and overwhelmed by the audience a film reaches.

People say: ‘Oh, it’s only acting,’ but it’s not ever just acting. At least not with me.

I am essentially very shy. Which, I guess, is why I’m very good at not being shy.

Shyness is invariably a suppression of something. It’s almost a fear of what you’re capable of.

I do find real life a bit overwhelming sometimes. I’m totally chaotic.

It’s like a badge of honour if you’re a British actor and you get the ‘Harry Potter’ call. It meant a lot to me.

The older I get, I’m really reminded how important the arts are to our wellbeing as a society.

Acting is not an intellectual process for me. It comes from my heart. It’s this strange netherworld of osmosis where I simply become.

In terms of partying and reckless abandon, I’m Don Juan. But, in terms of my heart, I’m the most loyal man you’ll ever meet.

I’ve had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me.

I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time.

It is joyous for any actor to enter other grounds of consciousness and thought. At the end of the day, we just all like dressing up and playing around.

I’ll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It’s my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it’s not England, it’s London.

Film and stage are very different; I don’t necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.

What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.

Spider-Man is a school boy that’s looking for his parents.

If you had to find a period in history that would equate to what the Internet has presented us with now, it would be Elizabethan England. It was a world in flux.

I think Liverpool generates generosity which rubs off – it’s a good place to work and to party.

I’m a real magpie when it comes to music; it’s all random, and there’s no pattern to what I like.

I’m a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.

I don’t sit around with other actors and talk about the pain and the magic of acting.