Rupert Friend Quotes

I was quite solitary for 'Hitman.' I was quite apart. He struck me as a very sad individual. There was a mournful quality there.

- Rupert Friend

It's all very brilliant to build bridges and buildings, but long after we're gone, it will be the natural things in this world which will still be here.

- Rupert Friend

I'm studying Krav Maga, which is an Israeli form of self defense. It's very deadly and without rules.

- Rupert Friend

Some are in it for the money, which is fine. Some of them are in it to be a movie star; that's another reason. Some actors - and this I never understand - will only play likeable characters. And if they're not likeable, they change them to be heroic.

- Rupert Friend

I was bullied a lot... doing anything overly well was punished by the kids.

- Rupert Friend

I went to a drama club when I was little, but it was more of an excuse to flirt with girls than anything else. We never put on plays.

- Rupert Friend

Seeing, say, 'My Left Foot,' and 'The Last of the Mohicans.' How is that the same person? Or people like Johnny Depp, who can play Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands. I am so interested in the transformation, in not knowing anything about them and watching somebody create a character. I'm not really interested in personalities.

- Rupert Friend

My great grandparents are Scottish, and I have this very tenuous connection which I try and bump up whenever I can, because I'd much rather be Scottish than English.

- Rupert Friend

I like Scottish people because they feel very true. They're always level and straight. They get a reputation for being hardened because of it, but I find them to be scrupulously honest people.

- Rupert Friend

My grandfather, who is English, was a member of a gentleman's club called the Caledonian, which you can only be a member of if you have Scottish lineage.

- Rupert Friend

The accent in England can change literally from street to street, and people have this sort of feudal tribalism whereby you can identify somebody's provenance by their voice.

- Rupert Friend

My auditions for drama school were miserable, but one thing I had on my side, although I had no experience or skill or training, was that I wanted to learn everything.

- Rupert Friend

The old saying, 'An army marches on its stomach' has never been more true than in film and television. If it's good, cheerful, and exciting and full of great yummy things, then everyone does really well. If it's the opposite, it's very disappointing.

- Rupert Friend

It might look like some incredibly complicated map to get from English period films to American action anti-heroes, but it really is just about not having a plan.

- Rupert Friend

Eating cold tuna fish out of a tin on a porch while two people are in love across a lake - I think that's desperately lonely.

- Rupert Friend

Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around.

- Rupert Friend

My father started his own business, and before that was a freelance lecturer, and my friends are artists and musicians; they don't have real jobs - none of us have real jobs.

- Rupert Friend

I get bored quickly. Always have. Short attention span.

- Rupert Friend

I find it easier to approach things from a critical angle that otherwise may seem daunting because I'm used to being scared.

- Rupert Friend

I got the 'I don't want the normal job' bug. At home, we have countless career advisors who would tell us to work in department stores and stay below the bar and not overreach our grasp. I didn't believe any of them.

- Rupert Friend

I love learning things, whether it's a language or Philippine knife-fighting or the Viennese waltz.

- Rupert Friend

I'm a dual citizen in a way. I live in the States and have a green card, so my connection to British politics is almost nonexistent.

- Rupert Friend

Wood is weirdly a big passion of mine. I really love it, all the way from trees to a finished table. The fact that it was alive and that each piece is different.

- Rupert Friend

The one thing I couldn't imagine is stopping still.

- Rupert Friend

I've never been to war, and I would never presume to fully understand the horrors that that kind of experience can impart.

- Rupert Friend

Everybody has many people inside of them; I think we tend to present the one we feel is most appropriate at first, in order to gain acceptance or achieve what we want. It gets really interesting when this technique fails, and other levels are revealed.

- Rupert Friend

Becoming that guy who does one thing is not very interesting. I'm lucky and proud to have been involved in period films and action films.

- Rupert Friend

I've never really thought about settling down anywhere. I like to keep moving.

- Rupert Friend

All I would say is that when I've been very down or having kind of a tough time in my life, certain films or pieces of music or books have changed that. They've taken me out of a dark place and put me into a more positive one. And I think that if we can do that for people, then it's certainly worth doing.

- Rupert Friend

I was asked by this British band called Kairos 4Tet to write lyrics for them. And I wrote lyrics for them. The album is called 'Everything We Hold,' and you can hear my lyrics.

- Rupert Friend

I really admire artists who take the time to recharge their batteries and not continually call on it. I think you can spot tired and jaded artists quite quickly.

- Rupert Friend

I have to be absolutely drawn to the project. If you're ashamed or bored by it at the beginning, it's going to be a pretty nightmarish thing.

- Rupert Friend

I never want to overstay my welcome for any character. I would rather people are excited by the ideas a character generates in them rather than feeling bored and wishing he would just go away.

- Rupert Friend

The more I'm committed to finding a way to genuinely be immersed in someone else's life, the more enjoyment there is in it. I've never been interested in smoke and mirrors and cutting corners. I'd rather just do it for real.

- Rupert Friend

We have characters in Western television shows who are in full health with shiny hair and shiny teeth, and they go about their lives having minor problems.

- Rupert Friend

I don't love plays. I don't love doing the same thing, every night, for 100 nights in a row.

- Rupert Friend

What theatre people love about theatre - and I totally understand it, I just don't share it - is that they feel they mint something afresh every night. Because I would rather do something until I've done it and then know it's done. New day, next thing!

- Rupert Friend

I'm a big fan of imagination. I think it's the strongest tool we have, and there are some things that you just can't practice.

- Rupert Friend

I've never got a part in the same way twice. I've never prepared the same way. I've never experienced the filming the process the same way.

- Rupert Friend

I'm a terrible dancer.

- Rupert Friend

One of the things I noticed in my career that gave me a lot of happiness early on was realising we don't have any control.

- Rupert Friend

I would say that being open to new things is kind of vital in this line of work, if not all lines of work, and being prepared to embrace the challenge of the new thing is something I want in my life until the day it's over.

- Rupert Friend

I really love living in cities where the people living above, below and next to you are from totally different worlds to you.

- Rupert Friend

I can only go places because I know that I can go away from them, if that makes sense. I like the gypsy lifestyle that filming affords.

- Rupert Friend

Han Solo is more interesting than Superman because he's flawed. Superman's flaw is kryptonite, and that's it. He can make time go backwards, for God's sake, but with Han Solo or Indiana Jones, there's a bit of humanity there.

- Rupert Friend

I find the English flag - the cross - quite frightening; it has very bad symbolism for me. Not just football hooligans but supremacists and the BNP.

- Rupert Friend

I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote, or endorse things, or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.

- Rupert Friend

I only do the press for the work. I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote or endorse things or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.

- Rupert Friend

It's an imaginative thing we do; it's about immersing oneself in one's imagination. If you're a novelist, you do it with pen and paper. We do it with our bodies.

- Rupert Friend

I've been a big blagger all my life.

- Rupert Friend

One of my uncles took me to my first movie in a cinema - 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.'

- Rupert Friend

I'm always interested in what we're not being shown. So if you're playing ostensibly a quote-unquote 'baddie,' what are their good sides, and vice versa.

- Rupert Friend

I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere in England and got out as soon as I could!

- Rupert Friend

I believe in allowing an audience the opportunity to make up their own mind.

- Rupert Friend

Growing up in England, you're sort of spoiled, in a way. You sort of take it for granted that within a half-hour's drive, you could be walking around a stately home from the 1700s. It's not very hard to do - in California, you've got to take a flight!

- Rupert Friend

There are two qualities that I've noticed in good directors: One is that they have their vision very strongly in place; and two is that they listen to everyone's opinion and still remember their vision.

- Rupert Friend

I find dipping one's toe into all of these people's lives is one of the major exciting points of being an actor. This dilettantism.

- Rupert Friend

The most contemporary film I can think of is your standard romantic comedy, but the minute you make them, they already look so aged.

- Rupert Friend

You fire blanks, but the guns eject real brass, hot cartridges. They're, like, 400 degrees.

- Rupert Friend

I think that what drives most of us as human beings is the want for something. You might have a hope, or a big dream, or a goal that you haven't yet achieved.

- Rupert Friend

I wasn't interested in football. It made me different. I wore glasses, had bad hair, a funny name, you name it.

- Rupert Friend

The Blue Ridge Mountains are an incredible place.

- Rupert Friend

I'll tell you, there's no goodies and baddies in the world, there's just people with intentions that sometimes clash.

- Rupert Friend

I don't think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it's shot. The studio system doesn't really exist.

- Rupert Friend

I'm not intelligent enough to be a doctor, and kind of hands down you can't argue with the worth of that. But I don't really have an opinion about the worth of making art.

- Rupert Friend

I don't really use the Internet or the newspapers to find out about people.

- Rupert Friend

If I make a film about now, the minute it was done, it wouldn't be about now; it'd be about then.

- Rupert Friend

It's great to sit and talk about the films and the people I work with, rather than where I buy my socks or whatever.

- Rupert Friend

I've never got on with recipes. Free yourself - throw them out!

- Rupert Friend

I'm not a big fan of people telling each other what to do, I'll say that.

- Rupert Friend

Everybody has many people inside of them. I think we tend to present the one we feel is most appropriate at first in order to gain acceptance or achieve what we want.

- Rupert Friend

There are some great actors I don't want to meet because I don't want to know how they did it. I don't want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy.

- Rupert Friend

Even if it's a bit blunt, I really appreciate somebody being straight with you.

- Rupert Friend

That routine thing is not comforting to me. It's the opposite to that.

- Rupert Friend

People say I have a scary face. I find that to be a mixed compliment.

- Rupert Friend

I don't do glamorous things.

- Rupert Friend

Intrigue is so much more effective. I don't like to be over-prescriptive of an audience. The same with a book or with art - people shouldn't read too much before they explore.

- Rupert Friend

When I come home, all I do is cook. I love cooking, so I go to markets, buy food, cook it for friends. I love doing that.

- Rupert Friend

Sport is not my thing.

- Rupert Friend

I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.

- Rupert Friend

I don't think you can decide how famous or not you become.

- Rupert Friend

I think you can decide how much of yourself you're willing to make public.

- Rupert Friend

I really enjoy the fact that the very boring, normal person that I am isn't kind of interesting to anyone. It's fine by me.

- Rupert Friend

I find it quite unsettling if I'm doing the same thing that I did yesterday.

- Rupert Friend

I think that the process of trying to become somebody else, and obviously the director/actor relationship in trying to do that, is such a weird, undefinable thing.

- Rupert Friend

I've never thought it was a good idea to act back-to-back.

- Rupert Friend

I guess the reason I wanted to be an actor was that it felt like it would offer something different all the time.

- Rupert Friend

'On the Road' completely changed the way I looked at what you could do with your life.

- Rupert Friend