John Noble Quotes

Human beings, we have dark sides; we have dark issues in our lives. To progress anywhere in life, you have to face your demons.

There's a certain pattern that exists with geniuses - an eccentricity, a lack of social graces and an inability to really communicate with mere mortals.

Many very strong fathers have turned out ineffectual sons by not allowing them to grow as men.

We shouldn't be put out to pasture just because we've reached somebody's idea of retirement, which was certainly happening in Australia, and I think elsewhere as well.

I think the glue that held Fringe together was the relationships.

We often get pigeon-holed as a tough guy, or whatever else. I've been pigeon-holed as a heavy and serious, and almost a baddy, but not quite a baddy, over the years of my work in television, particularly.

In Revelation 12, we see a pure, holy woman giving birth to a son - a corporate son who brings victory by the blood of Jesus, their testimony and sacrifice. My vision is to see that kind of church moving in the authority, the sacrifice and love of Jesus.

I'd never done anything that required a five-year commitment. To build a show that seems to have kept the imagination of the world so much was a bit otherworldly.

Doing animation is great fun. It's like a different world.

Lord Of The Rings fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students.

I don't know where the line is. I don't know how much of myself is in Walter. There's got to be a bit of him there.

As actors, you don't actually need to know the future of the character. You just need to know the backgrounds.

I find science really sexy and, at the time that I was a school kid, it certainly wasn't.

I could go anywhere in the world and people would stop me in the street and talk about Fringe and how much they adored it and asked questions about it.

I would kill to do more work with Orla Brady, I think she's that gifted.

I was a theater man, so I was never in the situation of being a handsome Hollywood leading man, and then having to age.

With science becoming far more accessible to all of us, I've become a pretty avid reader and devourer of it. One of the objectives that I had working with Fringe was to get more people talking about it because it's such fun.

Over the last 25 years, since a lot of science writing became accessible to layman, I've become quite a consumer of science. As a child, I wasn't streamed into science, and I regret that now.

Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky.

I always loved the challenge. When something new happened, I always used to get quite excited.

I think main storylines are what always intrigued me, with those that were the relationships between the characters against whatever backdrop, whether it was in an ordinary universe or a universe in the future.

My last two characters have been Denethor and Walter Bishop. Both will be hard acts to follow. That sits in the hands of my managers, at present. I just have no idea what's going to be offered to me.

We didn't know until really quite late in the piece how Joel [Wyman] would finish it off.

I have a very special love for all of those actors [in Fringe] and I'll miss them.Over the five years, we were given the chance to develop some pretty close bonds, both with our characters and personally, and we did.

I've played a bunch of different versions of Walter [from "Fringe"]... I loved it when he was being random, which was probably the original version of him, more than anyone else. I loved doing Walter then, and all of the different mental states that we've played.

'Fringe' is essentially a love story, so the scenes where Walter had close connection with Peter, but also with Anna's character or Jasika's character, were very special to me.

I didn't drop into the mannerisms of another version of the character, but I guess I was pretty alert to that.

The international reach of Fringe still catches me by surprise a bit, at times. Also, I was given the gift of a character that is every actor's dream. So, you combine those two factors and it's been an incredibly memorable five years.

[on playing Walter] It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor. It was like everything you could possibly hope for, over five years. So, I was a very lucky actor.

I'm truly grateful to the writers of Fringe for giving me that because, over the years, when I've spoken about the character with them, I've always felt that this would be the perfect way to end and complete his journey, and to complete the journey of this series, and they gave it to me.

A lot of the times, roles are chosen for us.

It might be different for people that are A-list actors, but a lot of us really look at what's offered to us and look for something that has some traction with other people. But, it's not like I read 100 scripts a week, and then pick and choose. Maybe some actors do. I certainly don't do that.

I'm a character actor, so as a character actor, I'm always looking for something interesting.

I remember when I read Walter, for example, six years ago now, I said, "This is the role for me." I said that to my family. There was something there that I knew was absolutely right, and that was just based on the character. That's when gut instinct comes into play. I know there are certain things I won't do.

You basically go in animation and it's all in the imagination. There aren't even pictures to look at. You usually go in there and work with whoever the director is to create this voice and this character.

I don't know how I absorb things, but I do. I just absorb them. I don't over read the script, and I don't really ever spend much time learning it.

It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor.

I suppose, when you start up in acting, you hope to be given challenges, and you always have dreams about the things you could do and couldn't do, but normally we get pigeon-holed a little bit, as we go on in our careers.

I loved playing Walternate because he was completely the same character, version 1985, and then it developed in such a different way, physically and mentally. So, to be able to play that, in the same television series, as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift for me.

I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work, and I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on with the different versions.

We've had such a close relationship with the fans. Through social networking and the internet, we have much more contact, and we did go to things like Comic-Con. So, I think people know most of our secrets.

Working in television is very hard. I think people know that.

Walter is incredibly complex. I do a lot of thinking about the work I do, and try to get the rhythms of scenes.

You're always working with the relationships. It's pretty demanding, but then again I love that.

[Fringe] was just about doing the job, or trying to do the job, properly. It was never a job that you could rest on your laurels. It was a very challenging 43 minutes of television that we were shooting, every week.

Particularly in the final season [of Fringe], when we were shooting seven-day episodes with a reduced budget and big special effects, the team was so polished, by then, that we were able to do it and, I think, with incredible results.

What I've observed is that television in the last decade has increased to something that's almost unrecognizable. They are feature films. That's a huge shift, and it's something the audience expects. They still may want to watch their half-hour sitcom, but when they watch scripted drama, they expect the standard.