Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea
Stephen Reais an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high-profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 film The Crying Game. He has during later years had important roles in the Hugo Blick TV series The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman, for which he won a BAFTA Award...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 October 1946
CountryIreland
We didn't have a television, so I grew up with books. This isn't to suggest I'm an intellectual, but I do read a lot because part of acting is an exploration of literature.
If you're playing a lead, you're shaping the movie. When you're playing a supporting role, you've got only a moment to make it count.
I'd like to own a movie camera - a proper one, with film, not a digital thing. Celluloid has more character.
When you're playing the part of a saxophone or a trumpet player, both of which I have done, it would be nice to be able to play like John Coltrane, but you can't. Your job is to do something else. And I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I'd be acting Niels Bohr any better if I went and studied physics for five years.
I'm not in denial about technology, but my mother used to say when I was a kid, 'Son, you're handless,' because I couldn't fix anything. My ambition is to be a Luddite.
The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.
I see people with laptops as being enslaved to something they can't live without.
You have to know who you are, if you don't you have nightmares.
I don't feel ashamed of my wife's political background, and I don't think she should either. I feel that the people who administered the North of Ireland for the last 20 years should be ashamed. There you are.
I didn't want to be seen as just a guy on a list. I'm interested in good scripts, scripts that are about something, scripts that move your acting along.
I have never been to a brothel. I don't think I could go into one.
I believe some people in this business suffer from fame because they behave in a famous fashion.