27 Quotes by Douglas Hodge

It doesn't matter how big the set is or how florid the music is: if it doesn't touch people's hearts, then I don't want to be in it.

As soon as I walk down that sticky six-mile patterned carpet that welcomes you at Heathrow, I buy the Sunday papers and read the fashion supplements cover to cover. Even though hardly a single word in them seems directed at any male who ever lived, I find them compulsive reading.

In our culture, good looks are so important, and today he'd head straight for a plastic surgeon, but in Cyrano's time, the nose was who he was, and it didn't matter that he was a brilliant poet, a brilliant swordsman, a brilliant man. His nose defined him.

It's pretty hard to play 'Romeo and Juliet' with someone and not fall in love.

The only way I survived at school was by doing impersonations of teachers and pupils. That led to me winning a talent competition when I was 16; the prize was three or four gigs in working men's clubs. I was just showing off: at the time, I thought that's what acting was.

I was doing a movie, 'Diana,' and I pulled aside the guy who was making the nose for Naomi Watts and said, 'I'm about to do 'Cyrano.' So he did various Photoshops of different looks that might work. I was really against any kind of 'Pinocchio' theater thing. The way that it's described in the play is this disfigurement.

I had this contract to write songs for people when I was about 18. I don't think any of them were taken up; I was a complete failure at it! But I've kept doing it, writing little songs for myself.

In England, I've had a more balanced career directing and acting. It can be quite difficult to juggle the two careers.

The review I've been most offended by came when I played Hamlet. I'd always prided myself on being an 'invisible actor' and not getting in the way of the play. But this review didn't mention me once. That's worse than being insulted.