Jude Law
English actor
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- My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.
- I've always been someone who's really tried to live in the here and now. My memory isn't very good so maybe that's why, but it just seems like I've been living this life, my current chapter, for a really long time and I don't really remember what it was like before. It's just been sort of ingrained in me. What I deal with day to day.
- I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general.
- I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see.
- We all have times when we go home at night and pull out our hair and feel misunderstood and lonely and like we're falling. I think the brain is such that there is always going to be something missing.
- I sometimes shy away because I don't want to be too 'showy-offy' but the older I get I think, 'You have a handkerchief, put it in your pocket.
- I'm only wanted by directors for the image I give off, and it makes me angry. I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.
- I'm not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I've done it's pretty obvious I'm not going to make a 'Mission: Impossible.
- I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents.
- I think everyone goes through chapters in their life and there was a time when I wasn't feeling terribly positive about what I was contributing to film, or wasn't feeling as if I was going in the direction I wanted and I re-evaluated what I was doing.
- There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.
- I feel more and more at ease, because I think the older I get, the less pressure there is. People say, 'Well, he's not cutting edge because he's not in his twenties, so he's not expected to be.'
- I suppose I'm intrigued with the bad traits of society, because I'm a part of society, and the bad traits pose the dangerous questions for our future.
- I'm kind of ashamed to be a celebrity. I don't understand wanting to read about other people's dirty laundry. I think celebrity is the biggest red herring society has ever pulled on itself.
- It was the first time I felt I was making a script I believed in, and that I'd see something onscreen close to what I'd hoped, rather than this vaguely confusing wilderness my jobs had been to this point. It was my first project with quality minds behind it, Jersey Films, Andrew Niccol, and Ethan Hawke, who was a joy to work with. I felt we had a real meeting of the minds. (On making Gattaca)
- It was cold, very, very cold. I don't remember a lot of daylight, just endless hours of being buried in rubble, interrupted by lots of raising collective spirits by singing Russian folk songs. Can our genuine physical suffering be seen on film? I bloody hope so. (On filming Enemy at the Gate)
- (2004 quote) I've spent most of my free time the past 10 years traveling in Southeast Asia. It started with a trip to Vietnam, because we were told it could be a wonderful place to visit. I loved it and have been to Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Bali. Now I'm intrigued to see places like South America or Africa. I like the idea of constantly discovering.
- I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I've hurt Sienna and the people most close to us.
- As a culture, the West has found itself in a strange, not battle of the genders, but battle in one's own gender. There's been so much equalizing that we've all kind of lost a little sense of who and what we're about, and a certain amount of definitions of who and what being a woman and being a man is about. It's almost like a murky middle ground that sometimes diffuses the definition and out of that has indeed spawned, in certain areas, misogynism.
- "It's not ideal for me that they come out all one after the other in four or five months. I did them all because I found them very different different kinds of films, different kinds of parts. And I hope people recognize the variety rather than the onslaught". (On Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004), Alfie (2004), Closer (2004/I) and The Aviator (2004) coming out within 6 months of each other. He actually did them in the last two years.)
- "Face it, I didn't become famous until I took my clothes off" - (People Magazine 3/26/01)
- There were two instances where the police were called for whatever reason to my old house and they sold the story, telling lies. The police were responding to phone calls that happened, but they were then coming out and creating an atmosphere, a drama, when actually nothing had happened; there were no charges pressed. But that's the High Court and then the police selling stories, so how are you going to live in a country and feel safe?
- I never thought I had to forge a family, but it felt the most natural thing that ever happened to me - meeting someone and becoming a father.
- I only want to do the kind of work that I would like to go and see, that's going to teach me something new, that involves working with people I can learn something from and I can give something to.