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I Think The Dictator Director Is Based Upon Stories From The Past. I Don't Think Anyone Would Put Up With It Now. There Are A Lot Of People On A Film Set With Egos. So, To Be Completely Authoritarian, You'd Probably Have To Have A Reputation Like Kurosowa Or Somebody To Get Away With It.

-Colin Firth

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I Think The Dictator

Colin Firth

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I Think The Dictator Director Is Based Upon Stories From The Past. I Don't Think Anyone Would Put Up With It Now. There Are A Lot Of People On A Film Set With Egos. So, To Be Completely Authoritarian, You'd Probably Have To Have A Reputation Like Kurosowa Or Somebody To Get Away With It.

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Forget Trying To Be Sexy. That's Just Gruesome.

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The Way I've Described Helen's Sort Of Rigorous Honesty I Just Think He Also Has Tremendously. It's Very Strange... He Just Has This Sort Of Way Of Making It Happen Really. You're Not Really Aware Of Being Directed, So Much As Being A Part Of This Thing.

If You're Playing Someone Who's Impeded By Fear, Or Shyness, Or Has Whatever Dysfunction Your Character Might Have, You Have To Achieve The Dysfunction First, Imaginatively, In Order To Play Someone Who Is Trying To Negotiate Their Way Out Of It.

So, If You Haven't Picked Up Some Tips During An Apprenticeship Like That, You Shouldn't Be Directing. It Doesn't Mean You Can Do It, But It Loads You Up With Information.

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You Have To Be Ill If You Want To Get Better.

But This Is Where You Get All The Market Research And Things Get In Danger Of Becoming Formulaic, And Where You Depend On Brands And Getting Recognised Actors. It's The Thing That Precludes Risk Very Often, Otherwise Everyone Would Be Avant-garde All Over The Place.

So, I Think There's A Danger That Good Stuff Can Fall By The Wayside If It Doesn't Conform To Formula. But I Think It Comes Down To Money And They Just Don't Know Where It's Going If They Haven't Got Any Precedent.

When I Look In The Mirror, I Don't See My Dad, I See My Grandmother. For A While It Was My Mother Looking Back At Me. If Only It Was My Dad.

No Matter How Much Technique You Draw On Or How Much Training You Have, Acting Is A Mystery.

Hollywood Hasn't Aggressively Pursued Me. Neither Have I Aggressively Pursued Hollywood.

I'll Be Your Friend So Long As You're Not Crap

'la Dolce Vita' Made We Want To Go To Rome And, If Not Jump Into The Trevi Fountain, At Least Watch Someone Else Do It. Maybe That's Why I Married An Italian...!

The English People, A Lot Of Them, Would Not Be Able To Understand A Word Of Spoken Shakespeare. There Are People Who Do And I'm Not Denying They Exist. But It's A Far More Philistine Country Than People Think.

I Do Think I'm A Character Actor.

Maybe It's Shallow Of Me To Have A Wife That's So Beautiful, But It Makes Things Easier. To Me She's The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.

It's A Funny Thing - The Reality Is I Have No Feelings About School. It's Long Gone. Funnily Enough, The Bad Memories - Of Which I Don't Have Any Left To Be Honest, I Can Just Remember A Sense Of Tedium - Have Faded. And Teachers That I Liked Have Remained Quite Vivid. There Are Three Or Four Left.

They Said: "make It In This Amount Of Time And Go For It Now..." Which Is Why I Was Suddenly Ambushed And We All Found Ourselves Doing It. I Suspect This Wasn't Quite Recognisable In Its Genre To Give People The Confidence Just To Throw Money At It.

Directors Don't Get To See Other Directors At Work - They're The Only One On The Set. I've Met Directors Who've Asked Me What Another Filmmaker Is Like. So, There's Probably Nobody Better Placed To Make All The Comparisons And To Pick Up Stuff Than An Actor.

My Singing Voice Is Somewhere Between A Drunken Apology And A Plumbing Problem.

Actors Are Basically Drag Queens. People Will Tell You They Act Because They Want To Heal Mankind Or, You Know, Explore The Nature Of The Human Psyche. Yes, Maybe. But Basically We Just Want To Put On A Frock And Dance.

I Love You Even When You're Sick And Look Disgusting.

The Failure So Far Of The Governments Of So Many Of The Worlds Most Powerful Countries In The Face Of Such Egregious Unfairness ... To Make The Slightest Progress On The Issue Of Fair Trade Is Hard To Explain.

Sometimes To Think About Why Some Institutions Are Stable, It's Interesting To Go One Generation Back And Look At The Author Of That Stability.

I Think England Has Served Me Very Well. I Like Living In London For The Reasons I Gave. I Have Absolutely No Intentions Of Cutting Those Ties. There Is Absolutely No Reason To Do So. Certainly Not, So That I Can Have A Swimming Pool And A Palm Tree.

I'm Fully Aware That If I Were To Change Professions Tomorrow, Become An Astronaut And Be The First Man To Land On Mars, The Headlines In The Newspapers Would Read: `mr. Darcy Lands On Mars.

There's A Paraphrase About Orson Welles Saying: "great Films Are Made By Great Directors And The Rest Are Made By Everyone Else." I've Been Very Lucky... Before I Start Insulting The Profession Of Directing, But I Think A Good Director Is Everything And A Bad Director Really Is Nothing At All.

To Work Effectively In A Film, You Have To Repeat And Work Consistently. Basically, You Shoot A Big Master Then You Do Close-ups. You're Supposed To Be In The Same Moment, The Same 30-second Moment, For A Day.

I Had Heard All Sorts Of Stories About Woody Allen's Directing - Directorial Approach. And Some Of Them Turned Out To Be Myth. But, One Of Them Was That He Doesn't Rehearse And Another Was That He Doesn't Really Direct, If He Doesn't Like It...he Cuts It Out Of The Movie, Or Even Replaces You.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Have Just Given Me A Time Out From My 20-year Midlife Crisis. My Heartfelt Thanks To Them.

Comedy - Particularly The Frothy And Frivolous - Is Notoriously Neglected By Festivals And Awards. But It's Bloody Hard To Get Right.

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Looking In The Mirror

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Popular Culture

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I Was Gearing Up For It. I Took Some Singing Lessons. And I Opened My Mouth, And Atom Promptly Said, 'that's Not Going To Happen. We Love Your Voice, But Maybe We Could Use Some Of Your English Wit.' He Had Doubts About It From Way Back. For Starters, We Weren't Going To Be Doing The Italian-american Crooning Thing.

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Certainly, From Where I Stand, I'm Not A Specialist In Wildly Different Walks And Voices. But I Find As Much Variation And Nuance As What Satisfies Me In What I Do. So, I Don't Find This Particularly Different. He Has His Own Peculiarities. You're Probably Talking About A Cluster Of Englishmen In Suits But I've Done Quite A Big Cluster Of Guys Not In Suits As Well, Which I've Occupied Myself With. So, I Don't Find That This Is The One That Stands Out.

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Perfectly Normal

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I'd Love To Try My Hand At Something Else.

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I Never Saw Myself As Mr. Ugly, But I'm Not That Handsome. I Can Sort Of Be Made To Look Quite A Lot Better Or Quite A Lot Worse.

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I Think That London Is Very Much Like That. I Find There's Humour In The Air And People Are Interesting. And I Think That It's A Place Which Is Constantly Surprising. The Worst Thing About It? I Think It Can Be Smug And Aggressive.

When I Visited Coffee Farms In Ethiopia, The Farmers Could Not Believe We Spend A Week's Wages In Their Country On A Cup Of Coffee In Ours, Because They See So Little Of The Profits. Oxfam's Fair Trade Campaign Helps Right This Wrong.

And That Is A Hard Route For A Woman To Come Through. There's Still A Lot Of Roles That Have To Be Conformed To. It's Quite An Old Fashioned Environment In A Lot Of Ways.

I Think The Dictator Director Is Based Upon Stories From The Past. I Don't Think Anyone Would Put Up With It Now. There Are A Lot Of People On A Film Set With Egos. So, To Be Completely Authoritarian, You'd Probably Have To Have A Reputation Like Kurosowa Or Somebody To Get Away With It.

Some People Come Up To Be Directors By Coming Through The Camera Department And There's Not A Lot Of Women In The Camera Department. The Ones That Are Have To Kind Of Prove They're One Of The Boys, I Think. I Don't Want To Get Into Trouble With Generalisations But I Think It's A Fair Observation.

I Haven't Had To Struggle Very Much. I Haven't Paid My Dues. I Think I Have Been Lucky.

Less Racist Now But It Has Been. I Don't Think It's Been Completely Stamped Out. There's A Class Element To It. And Who's Supposed To Do What. You're Very Unlikely To Get A Gay Grip.

It's Hard To Get Yourself Into A Position Where Someone Will Trust You To Direct A Film Anyway, Whatever Sex You Are. Certainly In England, The Film Set Is A Very Male Preserve. There's A Lot Of Very Rough Looking Men Pushing Equipment Around That Don't Want The Gaffer To Be A Girl.

I'm Just The Last English Twit, Really.

It's A Very Dangerous State. You Are Inclined To Recklessness And Kind Of Tune Out The Rest Of Your Life And Everything That's Been Important To You. It's Actually Not All That Pleasurable. I Don't Know Who The Hell Wants To Get In A Situation Where You Can't Bear An Hour Without Somebody's Company.

If I Were To Write A Book About The Progress Of Getting To A Third Film, It Would Be A Long One.

I Have A Great Deal Of Respect For The Craft, I Don't Know How Much Respect It Has For Me. But It's A Precision Process. Doing It On Stage Would Be, I Think, Terrifying. Doing It On Film Has Its Own Difficulties, Because Film Is Not Conducive To Spontaneity. You Might Have A Run Through And Get A Few Chuckles At Eight O'clock In The Morning, But You Don't Keep Laughing At The Same Thing All Day Long.

I Can Actually Get Involved In Getting Stories Off The Ground That No One Would Ask Me To Be In Because I'm The Wrong Age, The Wrong Sex, The Wrong Nationality, Or Whatever. I've Found It Quite Exhilarating To Have That Freedom To Tell The Stories That Aren't Just About Middle-aged White English Guys.

Because I Am An Englishman I Spent Most Of My Life In A State Of Embarrassment.

It Was Mainly To Do With Helen Hunt, To Be Honest. That's What Drew My Attention To It. I Was Interested In The Fact That She Was Going To Be Directing. I'd Never Met Her But She Projects A Degree Of Intelligence And It Was Convincing T Me That She'd Be Able To Handle This Sort Of Material Very Well.

I Do Think A Good Story In A Novel Is Fair Game And There's Nothing Wrong With Adapting That. It Sometimes Gets A Bit Facile Where They Think: "let's Get The Next Best-seller And See If We Can Turn It Into A Film."

It Used To Be That I Was Always Paranoid Or A Loser Or Something So There's Usually Something That You Seem To Associate Yourself With At One Time Or Another.

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