To be an actor you need various things. You need to have a head for choosing the roles. You have to be, hopefully, easy to work with so people enjoy working with you. You have to deal with missing roles, with not being asked to work, with doing good work and then being castigated by the critics for it. You have to have a skin that can deal with all of that. I, fortunately, seem to have the makeup which allows me to deal with the business. I mean, not as everybody.
Jeremy IronsI'm a complete libertarian. I think it's very, very dangerous. I really mean that. I think the smoking ban is a tip of an iceberg of society - the leaders of society telling us how to be. I think it's not their business. It's an attitude where the governors think, 'We know what's best for people, and they're so stupid that they would only not do it if we ban it.'
Jeremy IronsThere 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.
Jeremy IronsI think nobody since has written such extraordinary work as Shakespeare writes. The characters he writes are full of inconsistencies, which is a great human quality - I mean we're all very inconsistent in the way we behave.
Jeremy IronsAnd trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that Iām probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.
Jeremy Irons