Jonathan Rhys-Meyers Quotes

8 quotations by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

As a kid I spent an awful lot of time pretending I was somebody else. I think growing up in the 1980s wasn't very exciting so you kind of create this secret life of an alternate person. You pretend to be whatever you need to be that day, so you live in that dream world. So it's very easy to be an actor. I did a lot of acting when I was a kid. Not professionally, just to get myself in and out of trouble.

I liked traveling when I was younger, now I travel for work. When I was young I just traveled. My plan was to travel, work, travel, work. So I haven't done some of my own traveling for a while, but I will.

History has a way of skewing people's view. Playing Henry can be very, very difficult at times but it's also very, very freeing because there's not one person in the world - I don't care how many books they've read - there's not one person in the world who can tell me what Henry talked like, what he walked like, how he behaved himself. Nobody can tell me absolutely that that's the way it was because they don't know. It's all guess work.

Being an actor is the easiest job. Just say the lines.

I think I'd really like to be someone who would be known for being a nice guy.

A lot of men are very uptight, but I don't distinguish between male and female beauty. Beauty is beauty.

Even though I've had the body of work I've had, and the success I've had, I do not rest on my laurels whatsoever.

It's not about money, fame, people knowing you. It's not even about enjoying yourself and being happy. It's about achieving something that's brilliant, creating something that's brilliant, for other people. For yourself, you're always going to be unsatisfied, but if somebody comes up to me and says, 'That was a brilliant part, and I really, really got it'. That's essentially it.