Rowan Atkinson Quotes

The character [Maigret] is bound to change and develop, and I wouldn't like to claim that we are perfectly formed straight out of the box. I think it's what I'd call an 'optimistic start'. As you know, for me, no glass is anything other than half empty, so I apologise for my reticence in terms of promoting this programme.

The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or all those other things that people tend to attach to many fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job, in a very interesting time.

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

If you're a serious actor, it's when you know you're going to die tomorrow that you really start to feel it.

I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.

[Maigret Sets a Trap] was always going to be the first film, and it seemed to be quite a nice story. But of course it meant that here I was playing this new character for the first time, in a place where he had been a relative failure, as all these people had been murdered and the pressure was on. Rather than starting optimistically with his pipe in front of the fireplace, he was in quite a difficult place.

I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play.

In the modern media age we are rarely surprised by what we see. Whether it's on television or film or in the theatre, everything is so advertised, so trailed, that most entertainment is merely what you thought it was going to be like.

I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time.

To Be Successful You Don't Need Beautiful Face And Heroic Body, What You Need is Skillful Mind And Ability To Perform

This is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded or not. But yes, I found it difficult when we were shooting; it was a couple of weeks before I settled into not worrying - to finding a way of delivering those lines - so my worries of many months before I think had been justified. I found it a difficult way of being.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther.

Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You've got to be careful.

Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression.

I'm not a naturally funny man. I find that I can only be funny, if I become someone else.

Johnny English is someone who really means well it's just that he's not as good as he thinks he is, and I think that maybe that's the British male in a nutshell.

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.

It was the challenge of that that I found daunting, but also engaging and interesting [to play Maigret].

Lord, thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer.

For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.

But generally speaking, I tend to be quiet and introspective.

Marketing is what gets you noticed.

I love both [Johnny English and James Bond] actually. The action sequences are really exciting because you're getting to work with some brilliant crew and do some great stuff but you always get some magic when you're working with actors.

The good thing about those original credit card commercials was that they were very "filmic", they were like little movies, so it wasn't a big step to think well maybe we could make a big movie using this character, which we eventually did.

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming.

When I was doing Bean more than I’ve done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don't really need to explain very much at all - you just say he's a spy and he's a little bit theatrical and overblown and smug and he's not very good at his job.

I'm more critical of the films I make than anyone else.

I have always worried about things more than I should.

The arts community still has a long lasting cynicism of the importance, or the artistic value, of comedy. Comedy is just farting about for money.

I'm not a collector. I don't like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate.

[Georges] Simenon could be very brave like that. You never quite know what you're going to get or how the story's going to be told.

It's not easy to take a sit-com and turn it into a feature.

One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And I'm certainly not aware of suppressing more sophisticated ambitions.

We haven't made any particular decision [on Maigret], I haven't been asked if I want to carry on with it. All these things are a matter of whether you feel as though the idea is developing and whether it's still interesting to play.

And, we put a lot more value, or at least I personally put a lot more value, on the creative values and creative challenges of something than the commercial necessities.

I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It's not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.

To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.

I mean I can do it when I'm very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing.

But I always feel that whatever I do, I could do better. I suppose it is perfectionism.

I don't really have plans like that [move towards more dramatic acting].

I'm not looking for anything other than an interesting role to play.

When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.

You're about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking contest.