Various quotes from Jeremy and quotes from others about him

Jeremy's hunger appeal for Telefood: "I am supporting Telefood because it outrages me that hunger in the world still exists. Today the world is richer than it has ever been and yet tonight 200 million children will go to bed hungry and some of them will never get up."

Jeremy's thoughts on acting:    

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

"To tell you the truth, I'm not good at pretending.  That's why I have to disappear into my character when I act; I have to “be” not “pretend to be."

"I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live.  There's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy."

"I don't know if I'm insecure, I do know I need approval from time to time.  I value the appreciation of others for my work, especially colleagues.  I want to know if what I'm doing is right and applause helps."

"I certainly play people on the edge quite a lot.  I am interested in what makes people odd and what makes them different.  In life I try to play the edges.  I have a horror of the herd. There are many, many different sorts of people.  A lot of people are fairly uninteresting. I want to play the interesting ones.  The villains are always more interesting to portray.  Shakespeare knew that."

"I like roles that explore the dark side of the moon," says Irons, in his modulated, elegant English.  "I'm endlessly fascinated by  how people keep up a front in life.  How they keep going, when all this other stuff is going on below the surface -- things they're dealing with or things they're ignoring -- the sort of mess that we all turn our backs on."

Regarding his favorite films he's been in:  "I think I did my best work in Dead Ringers and I'm very proud of Lolita and The Mission.  Those are the only ones."

Regarding stage work:  “You have to communicate on a much greater scale.  With a camera, you can use the flick of an eye.  On stage, a lot of other things are happening that can pull focus or energy.  You're always thinking the same way, but you have to amplify your thoughts with the volume of your speech and the ways you use your whole body to communicate what you're feeling.  It's a little bit different from film.”

Playing King Arthur in Camelot:  “It's a musical I've never seen, but I've loved the music for some time.  This is a great, wonderful contrast from making movies.”

“I'm getting my singing voice back, cutting back on the cigarettes a fraction, and I've been rehearsing like mad."

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

Jeremy's thoughts on smoking:

"Personally, I am unconvinced that smoking kills you.  I think genetics takes a more important role."

"I love smoking.  It gives me such pleasure.  I’ve been smoking since I was 15."

 "I’ve always suspected these statistics people put out about cancer and smoking.  And now that people are stopping, they still get cancer.  The male side of my family has always smoked.  My mother has a friend who grew and smoked her own tobacco in Greece and died at the age of 101.  I think it’s the additives that are harmful."

"There are a few things that I quite like, but there's nothing that I can't do without.  I could even cope without cigarettes.  There are things that make me happy: for instance, I feel better when I have a dog in my life but I could live without one."

"I'm very, very ashamed to be a smoker.  I gave it up for two years and was pleased with myself.  Then I went back on about two months ago, and bang, I'm up to 40 a day.  However, there is a side of me which is very anarchic.  I think our job as actors, as artists, is to constantly make people question, to not fit into the status quo.  So I particularly enjoy smoking in America because I have a great dislike for political correctness - which I suppose goes back to the sneakers."

Regarding the smoking ban in England: "I don't think anything should be banned.  I think we should all just be polite and thoughtful towards each other.  It's like banning farting - it's something you're not meant to do, but we don't ban it."

On the hunting ban in England: "[The countryside] is in modern parlance a balanced ecosystem, and our presence here today is like being a signal; a signal not to meddle for politically correct reasons with that balance.  A signal that the voice of rural England will be heard.  A signal to leave our countryside alone."

On women and touching people: "What's true is that I do love women, and I have a habit of affectionately touching them.  You saw the way I am on the set.  I'm constantly going up to people and touching them.  That's just the way I am when I'm working. I'm not this nightclubbing playboy chasing women all over the world."

Childhood Dreams: "I wanted to be a veterinarian, like a childhood friend.  He had a practice in London in the week and at the weekend he would come down to look after cows and horses.  It seemed perfect, but I wasn't strong on science."

Politics: "I was a Labour Party voter, wanted to get them in and, indeed, have given them money, but I am fed up with Tony Blair's Government and in the interests of democracy am voting Conservative."

Thoughts on Paris Hilton: “Paris Hilton, that's very interesting what she did.  I've never done that.  I haven't really sort of ever got into that.  As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old don't have the energy I can remember how life used to be.”

Jeremy's Emmy acceptance speech for Elizabeth I (2006): ''All we ask for is great writing and great roles, and to work with great people.  And to get a great prize at the end of it is the icing on the cake."

Post Emmy Interview (2006): "I should have mentioned Helen Mirren.  She was the star of the show."

During the post Emmy Interview on E! News, Jeremy looks into the camera and says to his dogs, Dottie and Dora:  "And if they're watching, Dad's fine, and get off the sofa!"

Jeremy's thoughts on winning the Oscar for Best Actor:  "I knew this was my time for winning the Oscar.''

''I never get too nervous, but you sit there and think, I must practice the face."

Quotes from Jeremy's appearance on The Charlie Rose Show

(25 March 1998):

"I'm a lover of contrasts.  I like contrast because change makes you see more clearly.  If you know that something's going to come to an end, I think it makes you value it more than if you think it's going to go on forever."

C: "Are you going to run for mayor of London?"

J: "I'm not going to run for mayor of London.  I don't know where that story came from.  I'm interested in politics only that I'm interested in the place I live in.  And I'm interested in England."

Regarding his renovation of Kilcoe Castle in Ireland:

"I have various plans what I want to do with it.  Basically, I want to climb the mountain.  I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to the top.  I just want to get it back again, because that part of Ireland, it is the part of Ireland I live, has given me a huge amount.  It's a place I feel my soul resides, and I always believe that in somewhere or somebody gives you a lot, you give back.  You know, try to keep the balance."

"In my life I try to find projects that I think I'm not capable of.  Projects that would frighten me, that seem a risk, so that I can really have a feeling of achieving if I surmount those problems."

On Jeremy's career choices:

C: "Would you have done anything different?"

J: "No. Professionally, I would have done nothing differently.  I never believed in regrets anyway.  I think, you know, we just do what we think is right at the time.  I think I may have had more children.  That's possibly the one thing I would have liked to have done."

C: "You have two?"

J: "I have two and I would have liked five."

C: "Why five?"

J: "Well, six just seems a little bit over the top, and I think maybe I can get away with five.  But I shouldn't really say that, because I have two glorious boys, and I'm blessed with them.  But because they bring my wife and I such joy, I suppose I'm just greedy, I would have liked more."

Regarding why he chooses to live in England and Ireland rather than in the United States:

"I feel that you can be unsuccessful and still be wonderful, and I'm not sure that that is taught in quite the same here as it is in England, where success is not such a final statement about somebody's worth."

What others had to say about Jeremy:

An interview with David Cronenberg (director for Dead Ringers):

Interviewer: I was always surprised that Jeremy Irons never received an Oscar nomination for playing the psychotic twin gynecologists in "Dead Ringers," especially since he won awards from critics' groups.

David Cronenberg: Well that is why I still retain a healthy skepticism when it comes to awards. So many people felt sure he would get a nomination at least for that role. I think there were a lot of people who had trouble with that concept of gynecologists. If he had been playing twin lawyers he would have won an Oscar for it! He did thank me when he got his Oscar for "Reversal of Fortune," which was an extraordinary thing for him to do.

Please contact us if you have other Jeremy-related quotes to share with us. Thank you.

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