The more I’m committed to finding a way to genuinely be immersed in someone else’s life, the more enjoyment there is in it. I’ve never been interested in smoke and mirrors and cutting corners. I’d rather just do it for real.
Rupert Friend
What theatre people love about theatre – and I totally understand it, I just don’t share it – is that they feel they mint something afresh every night. Because I would rather do something until I’ve done it and then know it’s done. New day, next thing!
Rupert Friend
When I come home, all I do is cook. I love cooking, so I go to markets, buy food, cook it for friends. I love doing that.
Rupert Friend
The Blue Ridge Mountains are an incredible place.
Rupert Friend
Edinburgh is so cultural and such a beautiful place to walk around.
Rupert Friend
All I would say is that when I’ve been very down or having kind of a tough time in my life, certain films or pieces of music or books have changed that. They’ve taken me out of a dark place and put me into a more positive one. And I think that if we can do that for people, then it’s certainly worth doing.
Rupert Friend
I went to a drama club when I was little, but it was more of an excuse to flirt with girls than anything else. We never put on plays.
Rupert Friend
Eating cold tuna fish out of a tin on a porch while two people are in love across a lake – I think that’s desperately lonely.
Rupert Friend
I was quite solitary for ‘Hitman.’ I was quite apart. He struck me as a very sad individual. There was a mournful quality there.
Rupert Friend
I’m always interested in what we’re not being shown. So if you’re playing ostensibly a quote-unquote ‘baddie,’ what are their good sides, and vice versa.
Rupert Friend
One of my uncles took me to my first movie in a cinema – ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.’
Rupert Friend
There are some great actors I don’t want to meet because I don’t want to know how they did it. I don’t want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy.
Rupert Friend
I’ve never really thought about settling down anywhere. I like to keep moving.
Rupert Friend
‘On the Road’ completely changed the way I looked at what you could do with your life.
Rupert Friend
I’m not intelligent enough to be a doctor, and kind of hands down you can’t argue with the worth of that. But I don’t really have an opinion about the worth of making art.
Rupert Friend
I can only go places because I know that I can go away from them, if that makes sense. I like the gypsy lifestyle that filming affords.
Rupert Friend
There are two qualities that I’ve noticed in good directors: One is that they have their vision very strongly in place; and two is that they listen to everyone’s opinion and still remember their vision.
Rupert Friend
I think that the process of trying to become somebody else, and obviously the director/actor relationship in trying to do that, is such a weird, undefinable thing.
Rupert Friend
I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.
Rupert Friend
I think that what drives most of us as human beings is the want for something. You might have a hope, or a big dream, or a goal that you haven’t yet achieved.
Rupert Friend
The accent in England can change literally from street to street, and people have this sort of feudal tribalism whereby you can identify somebody’s provenance by their voice.
Rupert Friend
I’ll tell you, there’s no goodies and baddies in the world, there’s just people with intentions that sometimes clash.
Rupert Friend
Growing up in England, you’re sort of spoiled, in a way. You sort of take it for granted that within a half-hour’s drive, you could be walking around a stately home from the 1700s. It’s not very hard to do – in California, you’ve got to take a flight!
Rupert Friend
I’m a terrible dancer.
Rupert Friend
I think saying you’re bad at something is rather wonderful because then it doesn’t matter anymore.
Rupert Friend
I don’t think you can decide how famous or not you become.
Rupert Friend
I think you can decide how much of yourself you’re willing to make public.
Rupert Friend
I don’t really use the Internet or the newspapers to find out about people.
Rupert Friend
I’m only really interested in taking a part if it’s nothing like me.
Rupert Friend
My auditions for drama school were miserable, but one thing I had on my side, although I had no experience or skill or training, was that I wanted to learn everything.
Rupert Friend
I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere in England and got out as soon as I could!
Rupert Friend
My great grandparents are Scottish, and I have this very tenuous connection which I try and bump up whenever I can, because I’d much rather be Scottish than English.
Rupert Friend
I like Scottish people because they feel very true. They’re always level and straight. They get a reputation for being hardened because of it, but I find them to be scrupulously honest people.
Rupert Friend
Sport is not my thing.
Rupert Friend
I don’t think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it’s shot. The studio system doesn’t really exist.
Rupert Friend
I really love living in cities where the people living above, below and next to you are from totally different worlds to you.
Rupert Friend
Everybody has many people inside of them; I think we tend to present the one we feel is most appropriate at first, in order to gain acceptance or achieve what we want. It gets really interesting when this technique fails, and other levels are revealed.
Rupert Friend
I really admire artists who take the time to recharge their batteries and not continually call on it. I think you can spot tired and jaded artists quite quickly.
Rupert Friend
My father started his own business, and before that was a freelance lecturer, and my friends are artists and musicians; they don’t have real jobs – none of us have real jobs.
Rupert Friend
I don’t have a publicist. I don’t go to events or self-promote, or endorse things, or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.
Rupert Friend
It’s great to sit and talk about the films and the people I work with, rather than where I buy my socks or whatever.
Rupert Friend
I’ve never got a part in the same way twice. I’ve never prepared the same way. I’ve never experienced the filming the process the same way.
Rupert Friend
It might look like some incredibly complicated map to get from English period films to American action anti-heroes, but it really is just about not having a plan.
Rupert Friend
People say I have a scary face. I find that to be a mixed compliment.
Rupert Friend
You fire blanks, but the guns eject real brass, hot cartridges. They’re, like, 400 degrees.
Rupert Friend
I only do the press for the work. I don’t have a publicist. I don’t go to events or self-promote or endorse things or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.
Rupert Friend
This industry is too bonkers to understand. Every single part is completely different.
Rupert Friend
I’ve never thought it was a good idea to act back-to-back.
Rupert Friend
If you are going to have any chance of replicating life, you need to live it.
Rupert Friend
I get bored quickly. Always have. Short attention span.
Rupert Friend
That routine thing is not comforting to me. It’s the opposite to that.
Rupert Friend
I find it quite unsettling if I’m doing the same thing that I did yesterday.
Rupert Friend