Jason Isaacs Quotations

I saw the big guy in the blue sweatshirt just standing out front. They told him to drop the gun. They told us to stay down. It was scary. I thought there was going to be open fire. I just stayed there, just didn't move.

Well, he's not going to get any nicer. He's a genocidal racist maniac. He's one of these people who thinks the world was a great place when Voldemort ruled the world. He's particularly offended by mixed-blood Mudbloods, the product of wizards and humans. So I hope he goes into therapy.

When I started acting, I thought everything should be issue-based and that there should be a helpline at the end of every program.

There's nothing more mortifying than getting an erection.

This is a business that brings you into close contact with people who have lots of money. What's been nice about that is that it's made clear to me that that absolutely does not make them happier. In fact, it often makes them isolated, and they find it very difficult to trust anybody else.

I can't tell you too much about it because I'm not even meant to tell you that I'm in it. In fact, I might never work again now that I've been talking to you. I'm not in it for very long, let's put it that way.

It's just really, really beautiful. Each scene is one long 15 minute take without cutting. My scene is with Robin Wright-Penn so I'm pretty excited about that.

Acting is a really simple job - it's just hard to do. You just have to be that person with their background in that situation. That's all it is. My kids do it all the time when they're dressing up and playing games.

In the moment of acting you don't feel like anything, you feel like the person, as much as you can.

I'm still spending my working life trying to mine people's souls and now they're complimenting me in reviews on the amount of time I spend in the gym. On the definition of my triceps.

I am not a sex symbol.

It seems a bit weird to call someone your girlfriend when you have a child.

I imagine like most of us that I'd like obscene amounts of money but the people I met and worked with who have those obscene amounts of money and have obscene amounts of fame have awful lives. Really. I mean hideously compromised lives. And I can go anywhere. No one knows who I am.

There is nothing nicer than playing someone who is cooler, tougher, more virtuous and sexier than yourself and thinking, 'I can be anyone.

When I came back from filming 'Abduction', I told my agent: I'm staying in London now. If it takes doing children's theater from the back of a van in Kilburn, that's OK. I need to be with my family. My job is to keep the family together and provide for them.

God, I hate interviews with actors pouncing on. Who wants to know about their lives? I don't want to know about Al Pacino's life.

I damaged my Achilles tendon, so I can't run.

I think I was probably always a liar; I just get paid for it now.

I went to university and I was a bit out of my depth, socially.

I went off and read the books after the audition and I read all four books in one sitting - you know - didn't wash, didn't eat, drove around with them on the steering wheel like a lunatic. I suddenly understood why my friends, who I'd thought where slightly backward, had been so addicted to these children's books. They're like crack.

I get some of the nicest fan mail you could imagine. Also when I'm up for an award, my fans all vote online and then they'll boast to each other about how many thousands of times they've clicked my name. Their thumbs must be bleeding!

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.

I'm at the beginning of it. I'm Elektra's last job before the story kicks off.

Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?

In fact my favourite thing is the wig because I'm a very lazy actor so every time I put it on, in order to keep it straight, they kept on telling me to tip my head back because otherwise I was eating it all the time.

I could release myself into acting in a way that I was not released socially.

I would love to tell you I've found the secret to eternal youth. I go to the gym and avoid too many chips. I love to eat, hate to work out, but if you can't count all your ribs from a distance you're considered obese.

I think this show I'm going to do,' Awake,' if it's done well, will not only be provocative and entertaining, but help people. I want to do that.

The weird job of acting is that it is so simple. You just see the person in the situation. It is whatever you have to do to get there. Some people want to stay up all night or cut their toe off. For me it is a bunch of reading, and hanging out with real people, I do that. You never know what you are going to get. It might be the shoes people wear.

I got into shape because I took kick-boxing lessons every day to prepare for a fight scene with Taylor Lautner. I really wanted to lie down and eat Chinese food, but I kick-boxed every morning and ran. If someone was filming you with your kit off, you'd do the same thing.

I don't know if it's a romantic comedy but I'm in the beginning of the first of the season of "The West Wing." We shot it last year. I don't know. If anyone asks me to be in one, I'll jump on it.

Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.