95 Quotes by Toby Jones

It’s always very strange to have your life dramatized because it never happens like that. Things will be different.

There are things that I would avoid, so I have the choice to say no, when I feel I’m repeating myself too much. But then there could be a reason to do that with a good director. So I think actors have to have a loose philosophy.

I don’t know if it’s harder but when you’re playing a real person you want to honor their memory – even if they’re a criminal or someone that the public loathed. That can be challenging.

The script for ‘Infamous’ was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It’s a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this script is too good. They’ll never give it to me.’

You’re playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It’s never going to ‘be’ that person, but it’s based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction.

They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director’s imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

I would absolutely like to play more leading roles. There’s no philosophy – well, the only philosophy, I suppose, is to try and do different things.

I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he’s charming. I’ve been very lucky. Most of the directors I’ve worked with are charming. But Joe’s a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.

It’s hard to imagine anyone interested in film not being a fan of Alfred Hitchcock because he’s such a key influence on the entire history of cinema – it’s hard to escape his shadow.