Steve Coogan Quotes

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.

I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

If you got the balls to follow something through, you can end up being the coolest, smartest guy in the room, because you've literally put your ass on the line.

I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.

If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I don't apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don't do shouldn't matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.

I do like to make people cringe. That discomfort, tension, embarrassment, pain - all of those things interest me, and not through some sort of masochistic or sadistic impulse. It illuminates what being a human being is. It taps into what it is to be human more incisively than stuff that's just very pedestrian.

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

It's like aversion therapy. You keep doing scenes over and over again with three women in the bed with you, and we had to do them all in one week. Three girls would step out and another three girls would step into the bed. It sounds like a fantasy but by the end of it, I just wanted to go for a hike on my own in the north of England, in the hills. Because it became a sort of "be careful what you wish for" kinda thing.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.

People come up to me in supermarkets and demand humour. And the less amusing I am, the more they piss themselves. So I say, "I'm doing my shopping, mate, OK?" and the guy will be on the floor in hysterics. Quite odd. Eventually I do have to say something funny so I usually go for something pathetic like, "It's a nice place to shop but I wouldn't like to live here!" and they roar again. Wet themselves. I'm lucky though that I am not massively famous, I can get the Tube without much bother. Must be awful being the Beckhams.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

Two thousand years ago, the Holy family had a ramble from Nazareth to Bethlehem - in much the same way as I'm having a ramble from Norwich to Swaffham. Although I'm not comparing myself to Jesus - I don't want to get bogged down in that whole controversy again.

I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work.

People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting.

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy.

But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister.

Actors say they do their own stunts for the integrity of the film but I did them because they looked like a lot of fun.

I'm a huge fan of Jack Lemmon, he was someone who managed to tread that line between comedy and tragedy and sometimes give very big performances, but they were never over-demonstrative and they were never not based on a kind of real truthful human being.

I like the transience of Klimt paintings.

A friend of mine once said he like his women like his parmesan: strong smelling and shaved. I don't agree with that, but I don't like hairy women.

Hacking into a victim of crime's phone is a sort of poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have.

Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.

If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater.

I'm gonna hump ya. Like Deputy Dog... Would hump ya.

I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.

Guide dogs for the blind. It's cruel really, isn't it? Getting a dog to lead a man round all day. Not fair on either of them.

If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.

A lot of people can be very scared about making themselves vulnerable and appearing uncool. I don't really give a damn; as long as it's funny, I'll do it [make fun of myself].

In my mind God made Adam and Eve, he didn't make Adam and Steve.

I've met people who've dismissed me, and then they find out that they like my work, and suddenly their attitude changes toward me. And I think that's very funny and very human. But it's also very unattractive.

Sadly, I can't say the same for my Father, who is probably in a different place - Hell.

If you do something very successful, you will then be defined by it.

It’s our imperfections that make us vulnerable, make us interesting. How can I make myself a bit of an asshole and still have humanity about it?

I wasn't a naturally confident, extravert, outgoing person.

The great thing is that the funny side of getting old is fuel for my comedy.

I don't want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don't feel the need to do that.

To me, most theatre looks ridiculous. I find it very difficult to do. Personally, if I ever try to do serious stuff, I always end up looking like an asshole, so I might as well try and do comedy, because I'm good at that.

I think it's always funny when you see kids do Shakespeare. When I was at school, I was in Hamlet. I played Claudius, who's supposed to be a 60-year-old man, and I was like 18. It's inherently ridiculous seeing 18-year-old boys with gray beards. That's always funny.

I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.

I am lucky to be in a profession that is not age dependent.

I think we all have a slightly gay gene inside us, don't we? It might be 0.00001 per cent as mine is, or one per cent as yours is.

I never had any desire to be famous. I find people who do really sad. I genuinely feel sorry for them because there is nothing of substancein their lives. I am happy when I am writing or performing. Not when I sit there being "famous". I like recognition for my work, but not recognition for being "that bloke off the telly". It is genuinely humbling when a woman comes up to me, as someone did recently, to say she wanted to commit suicide after her husband died, and my show cheered her up and made her feel better. That's great.