Mark Rylance

“And people do enjoy the plays at completely different levels. And, likewise, they enjoy the authorship question... at completely different levels.”

“It's a very dangerous and lonely thing, I imagine, to be a spy: to have friendships that are deceptions, that are not honest.”

“I think, early on, I was very distrustful of authority yet needed a lot of approval from it. I was in that kind of bind. Which is a kind of abuse bind.”

“I did audition a lot. One's agent is keen to get you into film and TV because there's more money. I was always getting myself into commitments to theatre companies.”

“I just absolutely needed the theatre so desperately - it was my fate; it was where I was running towards. It was the place where I found peace and survival and all kinds of things.”

“I know that some people who move into film lose their nerve for the stage.”

“It's something I've enjoyed since being a kid, the fantasy of it, the imagining I'm someone other than who I am. I've always felt claustrophobic in one sense of identity. If anything, I've had to work to develop a sense of my own identity. I used to really hate it when people defined me.”

“In a way, I think science is the modern religion, and at times, I despise it as much as I despise other religions because it really will only accept stuff that fits its masculine ability to define the world.”

“If there was no fame involved and very minimal money - which is the case for most actors - I'd still be doing it. If I wasn't good enough to be a professional, I'd be an amateur actor.”

“As a leader, you get a pat on the back when you make a hard choice.”

“I have great mood swings, maybe because of playing lots of different characters as I do. I'm like a gymnast whose muscles get too stretched. I've got better at it, but I have a lot of emotional energy.”

“I didn't particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.”

“The bad, angry, upset, wounded people are more interesting, so they're in the news more, but I don't think they're in the majority. I have faith that things will change - I mean, just like everybody else, I don't fix my roof until it's actually leaking, but eventually, we all get round to doing it.”

“Some actors are frightened and concentrating so hard on their own performance, you don't feel that anything you do makes any difference. They're just kicking a ball against a wall, so to speak.”

“When I was a child, Sunday afternoons felt like they could last a week or a month. Increasingly, as I get older, time is going so, so fast.”

“A lot of actors, you can't get them to shut up. Instead of listening and watching, they're always telling you something.”

“If I were to do a sequel, it would be with Sophie as a very old woman and The BFG the same, a bit like that 'Let the Right One' in film.”

“Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.”

“I had to turn down a part in 'Empire of the Sun.' It would have paid £15,000, which was a year's earnings for me then, but I was offered a season at the 'National Theatre.'”

“It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.”