Quotes from Joseph Fiennes

I may seem to have worn a lot of tights in films, but actually, those are just the films that have been most visible or worked best. I have worn jeans a lot, too, but those ones haven't tended to work so well.

When I was offered the part in Shakespeare In Love a voice in my head said 'not another tights role!

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

I've always believed that you shouldn't want to mend a broken heart, because that's someone you don't want to forget. Scars can be good.

I love travelling. I love cultures.

There is more meat and mileage in complex characters, like 'Running with Scissors.'

From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of the Rough Gang - we went around and terrorized all the pupils in school.

Film is not as exhilarating, not as physically, mentally, or spiritually challenging, as theatre.

I fall in love with contradictions without understanding. I can't really portray them unless I do. So in a roundabout way I have to fall in love, it's my duty. If love is about understanding and understanding is compassion and compassion is love, I have to have compassion towards the world.

People call my family a dynasty, but I'm not sure what a dynasty actually is. And I don't feel part of one. It belies the truth of my real upbringing, which wasn't grand at all, and it flies in the face of the fact that, at root, I'm just a jobbing actor.

At home, our parents never compared us. I mean, there were seven of us kids. Obviously, I always looked up to my brother and his work, and I have nothing but utter respect. But I never felt we were in competition.

I love life. I'm fascinated by human behavior because that feeds back into my work.

I was baptised a Catholic and, although I'm not a churchgoer now, I do have a strong sense of the integrity of doing what you believe to be true.

I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.

I was thrust, excitingly, via 'Elizabeth' and 'Shakespeare in Love,' into a position one can only dream of, but it was startling, too. I was offered a multitude of roles riding horses in flouncy shirts, and I just thought, 'Hang on, I've just done that. What next?'

I think everyone around me played a part in raising me; there isn't one individual I could pick out - it was more a case of it taking the whole village to raise the child.