Quotes from Richard E. Grant

Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.

I always panic on the first day of work. You can do all the Stanislavsky-backstory homework, but when that moment arrives and you are in the clothes, hair, and makeup of somebody else, and you're saying the words created by somebody else - I never know how to do it. It's a complete mystery to me.

I've been led by my nose all my life and tried to make perfume by boiling sugar water in jam jars and stuffing them full of gardenia and rose petals when I was growing up in Swaziland.

When I came to England, the first director I met was Charles Sturridge, who told me, 'You speak like somebody out of the 1950s.'

You have to have some connection, empathy, or chemistry with the person you're playing and playing with.

Would gladly trade a limb to live my life free from fear!

The ease and pleasure of a long marriage is like gold dust. You feel fed and sustained and that you're intimately known.

It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast, slap bang in the middle of winter, is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year.

When I meet a couple, I'm always interested to know if they have been together for a long time, or how loyal they are, because I know that will impact on how much I'm prepared to trust them.

I am a very judgmental person. Of myself and other people. I recognise it's a great fault, but I have no power over that.

Never give up. You only get one life. Go for it!

My father was an alcoholic. I come from a family of them, so it's genetic luck or malfunction that I've ended up with no enzyme that processes it. I literally can't drink.

My parents were divorced when I was 11, and it made such a profound impression on my life that I suppose I thought that by not getting married, you could avoid your life being carved in two.

I like fixing things.

Nothing is fixed or foolproof; I have no delusion about that.

I am drawn to writing and directing as it is most like the feeling I had when I was a teenager with my puppet theatre. You are more in control of everything and involved in every aspect of production, so more challenged and fulfilled.

I place an enormous premium on loyalty. If someone betrays me, I can forgive them rationally, but emotionally I have found it impossible to do so.

You feel your game's raised by working with the best people.

It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast, slap bang in the middle of winter, is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year.

I've been on the 'Logan' movie set, which is a 300-strong crew of basically men. They had arms thicker than my thighs stuck together.

Anthony Hopkins says you just keep acting. Do it all the time and eventually it will happen. He got his break, after all, by taking a role nobody else wanted. A cannibal!

Proving yourself in a field where the casualty rate is so notoriously high is an ongoing challenge.

If somebody crosses me, or if I love them, then it's pretty unequivocal; there's not much grey.

Everything I dared dream of has come to fruition. Which is not to say that I don't grumble with the best of them, but the wobbles have been way outweighed by the wonders.