Top 20 Paddy Considine Quotes

People can very quickly have a very poor self-image. It doesn’t take much.

My fascination is not for cinema; it’s for human nature and human beings because I find it quite difficult being one at times.

The thing is, if I try to talk about acting, I come off as moaning. But I’m privileged. I think it’s all about control. Acting is vulnerable because you’re not in control of anything. You have to give up a lot of your trust; it’s up to somebody else what they do with what you’ve given them.

I live in a state of hypersensitivity, and I’ve always had this feeling that something bad is going to happen to myself, or my wife and children. This manifests itself in different fears and visions.

I have to believe there’s redemption in the darkest of circumstances; otherwise it’s too bleak for me.

Since being diagnosed with Asperger’s, I’d been working with an acting coach who has now become a good friend. We’d been trying lots of improvisational techniques to help me with some of the problems I experience. But it’s a very slow process.

You walk past people in streets, or they serve you in shops, and you know nothing about the horrors they may be living with.

I watched ‘Rocky‘ and ‘Raging Bull‘ and ‘Taxi Driver‘ over and over again. They spoke to you, man.

I can’t afford to step away from acting, but the one thing I’ve learnt after all these years is that I don’t fit in. It’s very difficult to be at the mercy of other people’s whims and visions.

All of a sudden I’m an actor, and I spend a decade trying to fit in and realising that I didn’t, really. Sometimes in the right circumstances, with the right people, it felt OK. But other times it was a bit more jobbing. I didn’t fit the mould, somehow.

I could never sit down and say: I’m going to do an out-and-out comedy, just to prove to people I can. You’ve just got to do what you do. Just listen to your soul and do your art and do it for the right reasons, and then you can’t fail.

I would hate to be thrust into the middle of a big film and not deliver. There’s young actors and they’re put into these central roles and they’re commanding armies – but they can’t quite pull it off. I’d much rather do it in small steps and build it from there.

Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you’re out of view.

There is nothing worse than when actors come to a set – and it happens a lot with big stars – and they are too aware of where the camera is. They are the show. And that becomes apparent and it affects the production. I am like ‘You should not know where the camera is – you should act, and I will do the rest.’

It’s different being a director. I suppose, especially if it’s a story you’ve written and you feel compelled to tell, in some ways it’s a lot easier than acting because you’re orchestrating the piece. As an actor, sometimes you’re trying to second-guess what people want.

I’ll admit, sometimes I’ve paid the bills with acting. You know the phrase, ‘It’s one for the money, two for the showreel.’ I don’t want that as a director. I don’t want to compromise myself. There’s a big old wide world out there. I want to explore it.

I suppose I just had this Christian idea about how I ought to go about my life. I thought, ‘If I work really hard and have a bit of success, the problems I’d had all my life would leave me.’ But, of course, not a bit of it left me because Asperger’s is not something you just get over or grow out of.

I think the older that I’m getting, the more I’m understand what a privileged job I have, and what an opportunity I have. Now I’m directing films and I’m getting my first movie in America off the ground, and you start to understand how the system really works.

The more I find out about the dynamic and how it works, the more I realize how lucky I am to have ever got anything. Like… there was no need to put me in ‘Cinderella Man’ – there was no need. Why? Just get an American actor – it would’ve been cheaper, probably.

It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I’d used it on other people’s films, collaborated, and I thought, ‘You know, I can do this myself.’ That was more important than anything else.