Tom Hollander Quotes

I prefer to be flippant about acting, just in case I'm rubbish.

Nothing else is as fulfilling as playing a part in which you are able to have a significant say in the creative process all the way through. How many actors get to do that? It's extremely rare.

For me, faith is more about aspiration than complacency - the smug satisfaction that other people find distasteful.

I like to think of myself as versatile, and I certainly have the most varied career, so I'm very, very lucky in that.

People behave differently to TV stars and film stars; it's to do with the scale of the medium. Film stars get hushed awe, TV stars get slapped on the back. Neither is good for you. Famous people don't hear the word 'no' enough.

I'm on the verge of taking a stand.

Stories about vicars are always being told because they're at the heart of our society. Vicars touch all parts of the community and see life in all its extremity.

Obviously I'd love to have kids and all that. Luckily, as a man, there's not such an egg timer on it, but I'd like to be able to pick them up without Nurofen first.

I did absolutely love playing Tabaqui, the hyena, who is morally conflicted and a villain, but also quite sweet.

I'm unhappy as Dylan Thomas was, because I'm not, but I've had my brushes with sadness.

The danger with playing a part that defines you is that it swallows up everything else.

Somehow I find it easier to inhabit characters if they are a little bit pathetic. I do seem to have an affinity with pathetic people.

Generally when I'm filming something, I have a sort of exaggerated, comical, sort of grotesque version of the same scene running parallel in my head. With this process, you get to let it out of the box a little bit.

If you're actually being paid to be miserable, and to be as miserable as you can be, that's a very fortunate thing, if you're prone to occasional lapses of spirit.

I'm not as self-destructive as Dylan Thomas, but I've certainly been around that behavior enough to have found it a release. The thing that I really enjoyed was being able to play misery.

I've had my moments of feeling miserable in my life, as has everyone, but it's not often that you actually get the opportunity to indulge that feeling. Mostly when people are depressed or miserable, they have to snap out of it because it doesn't work. It doesn't suit day-to-day life.

You're always a bit blind. If you look at stuff a few years later, you get a more objective look at it.

If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.

You always think, "Oh, I'm sure I could have done that better." But generally speaking, I am very proud of this.

I don't think anyone could ever be wholly satisfied with their performance.

I actually don't subscribe to the notion that comedy is easier than drama. When you're trying to be funny and you're not funny, that's really terrible. It's a horrible feeling.

The improv technique does one of two things. It either makes you raise your game, or retreat into a corner and decide to find a new career. But you do feel like you want to match and develop things.

Anybody who was a politician at one stage - when they were at the "I'd like to be a train driver" stage of their lives - must also have thought: "I'd like to make the world a better place if possible." So, I think that's why most politicians go into it. They don't want to take over the world and most go into it for good reasons and then, presumably, are beset by endless things stopping them from following their natural inclination to do the right thing.

You're always supposed to have sympathy for the person you're playing. You should be the one person who does.

I'm not Welsh and I didn't know that much about Dylan Thomas , and I saw that he's a huge icon of Welsh-ness.

I do a TV show about a priest in London, and he is also slightly beleaguered and is subject to fate and misfortune and daily difficulty.

I've always wanted to do a real comedy. I haven't done enough, and it seems silly not to do more, considering the fact that people tend to laugh at me.

In the periods of my life when I've had least contact with the Church, I've always assumed a belief in God is a solid thing, but clearly it's a relationship; it has good days and bad days.

When we get christened or married or die, we drift naturally in the direction of the church. And in moments of crisis, when our spiritual Tom-Tom is no longer telling us what to do, we find ourselves scrabbling at the vicarage door.

My sister and I both benefited hugely from the great security that our parents had given us, and then we went off and squandered it all rushing around in showbiz.

Every now and then, I feel terribly uncomfortable with what I'm working on, and then I think maybe I am an artist. I'm not very articulate about it, but I do know that you have to follow your gut.

I meet people who are famous, and it's made me realise that fame has huge lifestyle disadvantages. I'm nervous about that. I don't want to become a celebrity.

I'm no Kenneth Branagh or Ben Stiller. I'm not that single-minded: 'I'm producing it, directing it, and starring in it' kind of person; that's not me.