Eddie Redmayne Quotes

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

I draw and play the piano badly. But when I’m doing those things, I’m concentrating so hard there’s no room for worry. I find that onstage, too.

I have this horrific thing where I'm really bad with names and faces. I have an appalling memory. Someone will come up to me in the street and go, 'Eddie!', and I'll try and give myself time by going into overdrive, 'Hey, hi! Nice to see you!' and start a whole conversation because I can't distinguish between who I know and who I don't.

I do get stopped a bit now and then, but I can go to the supermarket and on the Tube without being noticed. It's usually me that gets starstruck, especially by TV stars.

Making 'Birdsong,' on the one hand you have how prestigious it is and the reputation of the book, which is something that's an extraordinary piece of work. Sebastian Faulkes is a genius. So you feel that responsibility when you're portraying that character that he's imagined and millions of readers have pictured.

The depiction of the exterior as opposed [to] what you're feeling inside is always so different that it's impossible to know what is right.

I love the variety of films. In theater, you go into a room and the director runs the room, so you all work to his or her method. On film, if an actor or an actress is in for a day or two, the director has to get out of that actor what they need, so they have to change and adapt to that actor's technique.

I'm trying to buy a house and set some sense of roots because otherwise you're constantly chasing one job after another, and you look back and you've had all these very extraordinary experiences with extraordinary people, but there's not a line of continuity to it.

I find that what doubt does, or fear, is it makes you come up with as many ideas as you possibly can. And on film that works 'cause you're then handing over that fear to the director, who has to make sense of all those options!

I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard.

Actors who perhaps are super-confident and have absolute belief in themselves I always admire, because I can't really be like that.

I feel like J.K. Rowling's world is one that is owned by everyone in some ways. People have grown up with it and have such a sense of that universe that there's something kind of wonderful seeing everyone get involved.

Two years ago, I shot 'Pillars of the Earth' in Budapest - it was a big part, but I had a lot of time to sit around and visit cafes.

I think all actors have a similar deal. You want some people who understand. Although it looks great - and is great - there are also shoddy moments when you feel really rotten, and when it's going well, you're not allowed to complain.

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.

It can be a miserable profession, acting, because you always want what you can’t have.

I love the Potter films. I found them the most wonderful sort of escapism every year or two.

They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places.

Ladies and babies, and mortgages, for that matter, can all wait. Acting has done a strange thing to me, though. I often sit there, thinking, 'I love this, but I wouldn't put my daughter on the stage.'

Up there on the screen, we can all fly. But down here on earth, we need to be each others wings.

I walk around talking to myself in accents. Usually people look at me like I'm a complete fruit loop.

And you can't complain about kissing Emma Watson. Isn't that what everyone in the world wants to do? I've known Emma for a few years. She's this amazing capacity of young and vibrant and brilliant, but also a bright, intelligent old soul.

This is the great luxury of not working: the moment you read a book that has nothing to do with work, you know you're really relaxed. And I have a sh*t attention span. I can't concentrate for more than five minutes.

It's the weird thing Eton does - you're at school next to lords and earls and, in my case, Prince William, so you end up being used to dealing with those sorts of people.

I go to the theater two or three times a week when I'm in London. Whereas I feel guilty going to the cinema in the middle of the afternoon.

I always try to describe making movies like summer camp, or some holiday where you spend all day, every day with a new group of people whom you kind of love and then never see again.

If I do a film and have to get naked, that tends to dictate how often I go to the gym. Acting in 'Richard II' on stage was a huge physical workout, so I ended up more toned than I normally am.

I had never been to a fashion show before going to the Burberry show last month. It was an extraordinary spectacle. I was incredibly green and had no idea what an undertaking it is. I also have a new respect for models because they are so close to the front row and must be so self-conscious.

I'm fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family, and I will be it's custodian and I promise you that I will polish him, and wait on him hand and foot.

Tequila is my salmon.

People ask, "Do you enjoy acting?" But you only have those specific few hours to do a scene, and then you drive home and wait for six months to find out how it went. You can't go back and put in a new idea. Filming is about continuing to be alert and to think, and I find it quite exhausting. Certainly I would say that fear is a part of that.

A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

Everything about filmmaking is incredibly weird, and there's nothing natural about watching yourself on the big screen or hearing your voice. It's that same thing that you feel when you watch yourself on a video camera and you hate the sound of your voice - it's that times 800.

I'm as voyeuristic and intrigued as the next person as to how celebrities live.

I always think of comedy as being spontaneous, and yet everything about filmmaking is not spontaneous.

Learning lines is hard for me because I have the attention span of a six year old. That's why being on planes all the time is so useful - I'm forced to learn out of boredom.

In England we have this saying about Marmite: people either love it or hate it. That's like a lot of the movie work I've done. People either find it repulsive or find it really interesting and get engaged in it.

If you've loved something and then in some ways you become a part of it, you just don't want to be the one that screws it up!

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

On so many levels, acting in film and TV is so much the sum of its parts, and somewhere in there, there's an alchemical thing that makes something happen or not - that makes something connect or not. Now, of course you want to make work that people see, but the enjoyment I get out of acting is playing characters.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

The fear of messing up is what makes you work harder!

Most actors hate watching their own films because all you can see is the glaring mistakes, your own tricks and ticks.

If you're an English actor and turn up in America, they don't have an opinion about where you sit. They have no idea what auditions to send you to, so they send you to everything.

As an actor there's a lot of scrutiny and, even when you've had success, it becomes about sustaining that success. A friend of mine described it as a peakless mountain. Even for Robert De Niro there's Al Pacino and for Pacino there's De Niro.

You never know what's right, what you feel inside versus what is portrayed.

I did an interview once where I was asked who I found attractive and I went on about cartoons and Nala from 'The Lion King' - and it's a bit weird but various of my ex-girlfriends actually did look like Nala.

As a runner on a film, you are the lowest of the low, and yet you have incredible access to everyone. I can totally imagine that for actors in the middle of a Hollywood bubble, all they really want is a sense of normality, and that gopher can be a tap for that.