Eddie Marsan
Eddie Marsan
Edward Maurice Charles "Eddie" Marsanis an English actor. He won the London Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008. He has appeared in the films Gangster No. 1, Mission: Impossible III, Sixty Six, V for Vendetta, Hancock, Sherlock Holmes, War Horse, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Best of Men, and The World's End. He also appears in Showtime's TV series Ray Donovanas Terry, and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth23 June 1968
ego actors want
I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.
clever feet careers
Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fantastic career who kept his feet on the ground.
jobs character thinking
The trick to acting is not to show off; it's to think the thoughts of the character. I was lucky because when I started acting, it was doing jobs above pubs. I learned to act in anonymity, so by the time people saw me, I knew what I was doing. I was crap for years, but no one saw me being crap. It's a trade you learn.
drama party school
I wasn't one of the ones voted most likely to succeed when I was at drama school, but I persevered and concentrated on the acting rather than going to the right parties and getting the right agent. Eventually, after ten years, it paid off.
house actors firsts
I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor.
thinking years wife
I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.'
character men play
I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so.
glasses people age
I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.
race class people
Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.
school class people
As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.
singers film wanted
I wanted to work with Bryan Singer because I like his films.
play suffering actors
It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.
character boys play
With a face like mine, I'm never going to play a character who conquers the universe, I'm going to play characters who are subject to forces bearing down on them. My career's based on how we are rather than how we wish we were - they get the good-looking boys in for that kind of role.
perseverance determination ignorance
What I love about the East End is that theres a great perseverance, determination and courage. What I dislike about it is that there is sometimes a celebration of ignorance.