32 Quotes by Rory Kinnear

There are a lot of actors out there who are able to engage with something in themselves which isn't necessarily their brain. But personally I find it very intellectually satisfying: doing your research and then burrowing as deeply into character as you can. I'm a naturally inquisitive person, too, and acting does feed into that.

When I was 15, I was asked to do 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at school, and it fundamentally changed my life. It's obviously an extraordinarily diverse and potentially electrifying part. It's a big leading part, and I hadn't really played anything like that before; I was the one doing the comedy side bit.

When you're 15, you're not really talking about the vicissitudes of fate and failed love and poetry and swordfighting - not a lot is necessarily touching on your own personal experience.

I always loved acting - though what I did in my teens was probably more eclat than elan. But I wasn't sure about doing it professionally.

Had my dad not been short and fat and balding, there's no doubt his career would have been very different. But he could do lots of stuff and made a very good career out of it. He had an incredible work ethic because he lost his father when he was very young, and the family had to pull together.

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

I think having a dispassionate eye is a good way of making art. When you don't know the structures of a place, you are unencumbered.

When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.

Without being overtly political about it, if people with severe disabilities are calculated in societal terms purely as a monetised unit, in terms of how much they cost in terms of care, you lose an important sense of who they are and the effect they have.