Jeremy Irons Quotes

We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.

At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.

We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.

I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.

What takes us back to the past are the memories. What brings us forward is our dreams.

It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat.

When it seems that someone has shattered your dreams....pick up even the smallest of pieces and use them to build bigger and better dreams.

So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.

I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.

Most people are robust. If a man puts his hand on a woman’s bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it. It is communication. Can’t we be friendly?

A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away.

You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts.

I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me.

Now in my theater training I showed no aptitude at all.

Never played a video game. Actually, I try to keep them out of my house.

Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.

Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.

One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it's unsustainable.

Anywhere I can ski in the morning and sell a movie in the afternoon is good.

Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.

Sadly, one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success.

I'm very glad I'm not a politician. I think it's one step away from the gates of hell, being a politician. I really do. It's a nightmare.

So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.

I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.

Godspell was a good leap for me, it was a good shop window.

I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.

The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you’re always asked to do what you’ve already done.

It's always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.

I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.

What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.

Could a father not marry his son?

My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.

There are a group of people who are managing the world to their advantage and who just look to the rest of us as people who will buy their products and fund their salaries.

It's always useful to be in big movies for one's career.

The work I prefer to do are the smaller budget pictures, television can be great but it ties you up for quite a long time.

I've actually always been fussy about the work I do.

I try to avoid doing movies where I act with tennis balls. It's ultimately incredibly tedious.

I think I'm probably an assassin and not a Templar, but no doubt we're probably run by people with Templar mentalities.

The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.

Commerce seems to be covering every aspect of our lives now. Which me, because I'm a romantic, is sad for me to say.

Civility, politeness, it's like a cement in a society: binds it together. And when we lose it, then I think we all feel lesser and slightly dirty because of it.