Steve Coogan Quotes - Page 4

Even great people are always slightly disappointing, which is generally what makes them interesting.

London audiences are tricky, too. They don't laugh as much as the Northern audiences because, and I hate to say this, they are a bit cleverer normally, and they are picking up on all the little details and listening more carefully.

When you tour you become more intimate with your audience. It's like I need reassurance that they like me or at least find me relevant. And that I can still do it.

In England, I've done a whole bunch of stuff where I just make a complete ass of myself. I've been doing it for 20 years, so I just gravitate toward it anyway. I'd rather do that than do the stuff where I'm supposed to be trying to look cool in some way. It's more interesting to me.

I do like to make people cringe. That discomfort, tension, embarrassment, pain - all of those things interest me, and not through some sort of masochistic or sadistic impulse. It illuminates what being a human being is. It taps into what it is to be human more incisively than stuff that's just very pedestrian.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

Comedy is unique in the sense that laughter is a palpable noise that everyone makes.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

I don't like new bands. I don't want to be one of those pathetic old men in their forties who knows exactly what 18-year-olds are into.

I always think that, even when people behave badly, if you like something deep inside them, then there is a tiny bit of nobility - they wish they could be good.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

The tabloids operate in an amoral parallel universe where the bottom line is selling newspapers.

If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused.

The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches.

All drama teachers are very effusive, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical. Those people don't work in banks and they don't work for pharmaceutical companies. They teach drama, or they may be theatre directors. That's why I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.

It's arguably the best newspaper in the world.

Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.

The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.

The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It's a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.

All those people who go around saying Life begins at forty, they're notable by their absence. The nerve.

There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.

I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.

What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.