A biography for Rupert Friendhasn’t been written yet.
“Eating cold tuna fish out of a tin on a porch while two people are in love across a lake - I think that's desperately lonely.”
“'We' is a difficult word for me. I don't know if I feel 'we' about anything.”
“I think you can decide how much of yourself you're willing to make public.”
“It's an imaginative thing we do; it's about immersing oneself in one's imagination. If you're a novelist, you do it with pen and paper. We do it with our bodies.”
“Some are in it for the money, which is fine. Some of them are in it to be a movie star; that's another reason. Some actors - and this I never understand - will only play likeable characters. And if they're not likeable, they change them to be heroic.”
“I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere in England and got out as soon as I could!”
“It might look like some incredibly complicated map to get from English period films to American action anti-heroes, but it really is just about not having a plan.”
“I'm studying Krav Maga, which is an Israeli form of self defense. It's very deadly and without rules.”
“I don't do glamorous things.”
“The one thing I couldn't imagine is stopping still.”
“One of the things I noticed in my career that gave me a lot of happiness early on was realising we don't have any control.”
“What theatre people love about theatre - and I totally understand it, I just don't share it - is that they feel they mint something afresh every night. Because I would rather do something until I've done it and then know it's done. New day, next thing!”
“I find dipping one's toe into all of these people's lives is one of the major exciting points of being an actor. This dilettantism.”
“Intrigue is so much more effective. I don't like to be over-prescriptive of an audience. The same with a book or with art - people shouldn't read too much before they explore.”
“I think that the process of trying to become somebody else, and obviously the director/actor relationship in trying to do that, is such a weird, undefinable thing.”
“Sport is not my thing.”
“I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote, or endorse things, or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.”
“I'm only really interested in taking a part if it's nothing like me.”
“That routine thing is not comforting to me. It's the opposite to that.”
“Becoming that guy who does one thing is not very interesting. I'm lucky and proud to have been involved in period films and action films.”