Quotes from James Purefoy

I think, as an actor, I would find it a little run-of-the-mill doing procedurals where it's the same sort of thing week in and week out. Your character doesn't get to grow very much, which, purely from an actor's point of view, you want to see an arc of your character.

I ran into my old friend Michael Kenneth Williams, who I worked with on a show called 'The Philanthropist' for NBC. He was going to be doing this show called 'Hap and Leonard.' He was playing Leonard, and they were looking for somebody to play Hap.

The East Texas accent is a famously difficult accent to do.

What I went into the acting business for was to have a certain amount of chaos in my life. I don't know what I'm doing next. It's exciting. That's the way I like it.

My pub was full of get-rich-quick schemes that never worked - scams, pyramid schemes. People trying to find a way to get themselves out of a rut.

When you don't take what you have for granted, you constantly try to re-prove yourself to yourself rather than to other people.

One of the great things about being an actor is that you have a completely different challenge every few months.

Acting is a way to escape who you are for a short period of time. It doesn't happen all the time , but every now and then, the sensation of being 'other' is very profound. You get this moment where you are no longer yourself. You lose consciousness of the crew or the audience... it's a thrilling moment. And even quite spiritual.

I am not a big fan of what I call 'ambient television,' which just washes through you in a very polite way. I like television that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.

I don't have much time for real violence at all. I think there are infinitely better ways of changing the world than using violence. Sitting round a table talking is a pretty good start.

Acting gives me a chance to be people I will never be, in real life. I like changing who I am.

As an actor you have to get used to receiving gentle little pies in the face.

I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, 'Rome,' in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.

Once you have kids, horror movies become too horrible to watch because you imagine your own children in those situations, so you stop watching them.

I think the business affairs people at the studios get some kind of perverse satisfaction in finding the worst hotels for actors to stay in.

Ring tones are just irritating, aren't they?

It has taken a long time for me to be able to really just be in front of the camera.

One of the reasons a lot of actors go into the business is that for a short period of time, you get to be other people who you can only fantasize about being, by and large.

I like doing things that are very wildly different. I find that the meat and vegetables of being an actor is doing things that are completely different, all the time.

Joe Carroll had a certain black comedy to him. But I think it's lovely playing a man who, in his heart and soul, is a gentle man. And he's wounded and complicated.

You were always told that if you worked hard, you would get somewhere. But so many people feel they have worked hard and they have nothing to show for it.

Actors tend to get better with age. You start cutting away the useless stuff and achieving a point of effortlessness and simplicity, which is all you want to do, with any art at all.

British actors are pretty good, by and large, at turning on at 'action' and off at 'cut.'