Explore Quotes by Mark Strong

You do a play, or you go on set for the first day of filming: if you don't have nerves, and you don't have any kind of adrenalin pushing you forward, then something is wrong.

It's great to have the chance to play a character before he goes to the dark side, or the yellow side if you will. Normally, you don't get that opportunity. The narrative of a movie usually demands that you are that guy from the start.

In the past, if I didn't work, I didn't eat but now I feel I can not work and I won't starve.

I was born in Islington and grew up in Islington, so Arsenal was all around me, and supporting them was kind of unavoidable. The first season I started going to watch them was when we did the Double in 1971, so my first heroes were Charlie George, Ray Kennedy, and John Radford.

Because I had children relatively late - in my 40s rather than in my 20s - it wasn't anything I ever knew that I would do. It kind of happened to me: I met the right woman and we had children. It was a revelation because it suddenly makes me realize, 'Oh, I get it. Now I know what to do with the rest of my life.'

I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.

I'm very organized and tidy in my home life and I generally do something myself rather than farm it out to somebody else. I don't have an assistant or anything because I think I can do it myself.

And I think in your 40s, you land a little bit, physically and mentally, you arrive at a place where you feel you've learned some stuff. Having children at that point meant I had something very useful to do for the next 20 years.

All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.