Michael Gambon Quotes

Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality. No real character actor, of course, just me.

I never met my theater fans. I'm out the stage door five minutes after the curtain goes up. So that's it. I don't even know who comes, but thank God they do come. I can't tell. I keep my head down. I don't meet them. The fans from "Harry Potter" are kids who stop me in the street. I love that. That's terrific. I was amazed how many do.

Oh yeah, I'd love to be a comedian. I've done a lot, but always in the confines of plays.

I'm very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There's nothing so beautiful.

I'm an anorak. I've always been an obsessive collector of things. Richard Briers collects stamps. I collect cars and guns, which are much more expensive, and much more difficult to store.

I am a theatre actor, but the last ten years I've taken parts in movies because it keeps me in money.

Like a heartbeat. Something inside me. Some dream. I think it's being a dreamer as a child. Dreamy kids become actors, don't they?

I live in fear of being a contented passenger. I'd rather get parts I can't play.

Television has dried up for my generation, so its plays and films.

Yeah, I like causing trouble. It's the teddy boy in me. I used to be a teddy boy. Feeling slightly inferior and wanting to cause a bit of bother and get some action going on in the room rather than get bored stiff.

I've always tried to be an actor who... I just plod on and try to keep my mouth shut, mind my own business. I find the whole thing about people's lives... I can't understand it. I'm always astonished that people want to know anything about me.

I just hate the idea of being well known. I know that is almost impossible if you're an actor who has done okay, but I've always fought against it.

I belong to quite a lot of learned societies. We collect firearms and discuss them at dinners and clubs and things.

A child did approach me in a restaurant in Cornwall, but he thought I was Gandalf.

There were no spells at my school, just a smack in the mouth.

There's no subtext in Harry Potter really; it's all magic, anything can happen. Why do I say this? Because it's a magic spell. It's quite nice in a way. There is a real freedom to it.

For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that.

I learn the lines that JK Rowling or whoever writes them, and say them.

I used to be gay, but I was forced to give it up, because it made my eyes water.

There are some actors who are rehearsal actors, and some who are not. I am not. Having said that, I don't know what I am talking about.

Paul Schofield said something like, 'If I'm not acting in a play, I don't really exist.' Those weren't the exact words, but he meant it's only when I'm acting in a play that I've got something to say about the world. And then why should I talk, when people can come to see it?

I promise myself that I would go and do a play every year.