Paul Bettany Quotes

The only thing I think I can be accused of about paparazzi is being really naive. I didnt think about it coming along with the job and I never, during my three years at drama school, fantasized about one bit of it.

It's weird, because usually if you're British and you go to America you play baddies; but I play naughty people here and goodies in America.

I simply don't understand the refugee crisis. The history of humanity can be told through a story of migration and settlement. If I can't protect my family, I'm coming to where you are; I'm just coming. It's a round world, and we've all got to get on with it and move on.

The only way one can guarantee one's loyalty is love. Loyalty is beyond logic, really.

I find that our response to homelessness really puzzlingly. It's a peculiar response that people have.

I feel safe in saying this, and that is that Peter Weir is without a doubt one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I'd open a door in a movie for him if he asked me to.

I have an interest in giving people a cathartic experience, and making them look at homeless people differently, and making them question how they judge people, in general.

I have no interest in movies that take you somewhere dark and leave you there, for no reason.

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

The trouble with talking about acting is that it's like sex. It's enormously fun to do but just dreadfully embarrassing when you have to talk about it.

I was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist.

Up until like five seconds ago, I just took what jobs came along.

I'm a guy who is married to an actress, who has three children, and lives in Tribeca. Where do you draw the line on what I am allowed to discuss?

I still read the British papers, but I’ve never been a Royalist, ever. It’s funny, there always seems to be much more of a fascination with the Royal Family over here then there does in England.

The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful.

I learned so much about myself from reading this script and doing this movie [Shelter] because the level of judgment and the lack of humanity I saw in myself was disgusting. I never took into account what a homeless person might have been through.

The world is split into two kinds of people, those who would go out for a drink with John Lennon, and those who`'d choose Paul McCartney... After The Beatles came back from India, Lennon wrote "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and McCartney wrote "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." End of argument.

An agent friend of mine who will remain nameless said you can't make a romance about homeless people; nobody wants to see them kiss. And I thought, what a repulsive, repugnant, extraordinary thing to say. I had to think about the fact that the world is probably full of other people who feel like that. The very idea that we spend time trying to humanize humans is extraordinary to me.

Half of NYC's homeless populations are families.Homeless people have been ignored for too long. I'll just say this: If you are a family on the brink of eviction you are 80% less likely to get evicted if you have legal counsel. However, there is no right to legal counsel in housing court.It would cost the city $12,500 to grant that family legal counsel. Meanwhile, the average stay for a homeless family in a shelter once they have been evicted cost the city $45,000. So not only does it seem like the right thing to do morally, it's also the right thing to do fiscally.

In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done.

I never really took into account the number of homeless families. As a kid, we used to feed the hungry at my church every other Saturday, and one day this kid from my school was there. Somewhere between that moment of realization and appreciation for what my Dad sacrificed for us to have, and me becoming "Anthony Mackie" I lost it. This movie [Shelter] really made me realize that, and it was very humbling and very sickening to see that within myself.

I realized that this story [Shelter] is all about family, family loss, and how it influences you day to day life.

I do feel that scripts get developed now to a point where they're sort of actor-proof. If the actor is not very good, the narrative still survives because it's all in the dialogue. Not to say there aren't great performances in English-language films, because there are every year, but the 1970s were awash with great performances, and I was wondering whether it had to do with the amount of space and the amount of responsibility given to the actors.

I come down as an actor and my marks are already laid out on the floor - somebody else organized what I'm going to do. I think, why am I here? And why I'm here is to express the words with some sort of vague emotion and make them seem real. I wanted to go back to how it was before.

Logic doesn't really provide for loyalty. If your logic changes suddenly and things not make sense, you can alter your allegiance, but love stops you from being able to do that.

I wanted to know as the director how the actors wanted to tell this story I wanted to know what they thought.

People have suggested that perhaps we are too affluent to be telling this story, which is amazing to me because then I wonder what story I am allowed to tell. Having been working with the homeless for the past years, I noticed lots of things about them, but one thing I really noticed was that they were probably too busy just getting though the day to make a film about themselves.

Doing the big budget films really makes you appreciate doing movies like Shelter. It's because this is like doing theater, you just have to hit the ground running

An actor has so much less space and responsibility. Sometimes you come on, and there are already tape marks for where you are supposed to stand, and the dialogue is already decided on. If you want to make a change and contribute something, it has to be approved by a number of people.

You'll still work with some directors where that doesn't happen, and sometimes it's out of necessity because you're in a really complicated, choreographed fight scene and the whole thing is being prevised in a computer, so it's been decided months before, but I think that's sneaking into the way action scenes are shot.

I'm sure some people have an absolute grasp of where they are in their careers. I just don't think about it that much.

So the actual privilege is that you can then take time off - and if you don't, you're a fool. You're earning all this money to support children whom you then don't see, which is absurd.

For some ungodly reason, I end up being naked in a lot of stuff. But there is a certain grace and kudos that come with taking your clothes off on the first day, a respect that is given by the rest of the cast.

For a while, I stopped enjoying making movies and I stopped enjoying acting, because I made a few decisions that I wish I hadn't made.

I was born a Catholic and now I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm something but I'm not a believer any more.

I think when you're trying to produce a relationship on screen that doesn't actually exist, perhaps sometimes there's a temptation to look at each other more, to touch each other more...

But I feel truly wowed by the architecture and the meaning of the architecture if you get lost in it and think about the man hours in the smallest little chapel, and the love involved. God its fantastic.

In a world of increasing grey areas, we are becoming more and more entrenched in black and white positions.

My experience of people is that they are infinitely forgivable.

I really like telling stories. When I was a kid, I wanted to write songs. In quite a fundamental, gratifying, childish way, I enjoy the doing of telling a story.

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.

I feel like the world we live in seems to be full of an increasingly grey area, but the culture that we live in seems to be getting really entrenched in black and white positions, and I think it's urgent to talk about that because it's going to kill us all.

I remember coming on my first set and it being a playground of things I wanted to ask questions about: cameras and lenses and what the lenses do, what's the focus puller doing and how does that work? Why is there less margin for error when there's less light? I was always asking questions and watching directors closely.

I was always waiting for the secret to be handed down to me. Ron Howard asked me what I was waiting for and I went, "Ron, I'm waiting to know the secret. I keep feeling there's some sort of secret that's going to passed on from a director." He went, "Oh no. There is none. You've just got to on and do it and make mistakes and figure it out."

I think language is the most important thing that human beings have ever accomplished, and the only thing that's really going to get us all out of the troubles that we find ourselves in.

I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.

I was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist. I think religion does a lot for us but I can't quite believe it, alas... It's just a personal choice. I love the idea of heaven though. Who doesn't? It's lovely.

When I became a father acting sort of took the place of what I did in my free time and my children became the main focus. I play a lot and my children play. Both my sons - my daughter's still too young really - have surpassed me with their music skills, which is wildly irritating.