James Norton
James Norton
James Geoffrey Ian Nortonis an English actor. He is best known for roles in the British TV series Happy Valley, Grantchester and War & Peace. For his role as ex-convict Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, Norton was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2015...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth18 July 1985
CityLondon, England
guilt sunny swim weird
If it's a sunny day, I get this weird guilt if I'm not making the most of it, so I'll walk or go for a swim or get on my bike, or I'll go to the Heath, just have a reason to get out.
Half of what creates psychopaths is genetic, but the other half is conditioning.
Being in a person's head for five months, where they're so hateful, is kind of exhausting.
age bug
I had the acting bug from a very early age.
grew home north
I grew up in North Yorkshire, but now London is home.
characters compare fantasy next remote shocking
If you compare the violence in 'Happy Valley' to the violence in something like 'Game of Thrones,' it's nothing. But it is shocking because it's so real and grounded. The characters could live next door to you - they're not in a remote fantasy world.
character judging cynical
If you're constantly stepping outside of the character and judging them, you'll never really be able to fully engage because you'll always be slightly cynical.
summer falling-in-love jobs
The Russians were all really accommodating, and that made it really special. To be allowed in Catherine's Summer Palace...Lily [James] and I have this scene where we fall in love and we waltz up and down this enormous gold hall with thousands of candles and a live orchestra and 300 Russian extras. To do those scenes in situ really meant it was a once-in-a-lifetime job.
character trying spend-time
You really try to work the character out and spend time in the headspace of the character. That's what I did.
falling-in-love military war
There's so much going on in Andrei [Bolkonsky]. He's wrangling with these big existential conundrums, and he tries out different routes to fulfillment. He tries falling in love, that doesn't work. He goes to war and searches for military glory, that doesn't work. He does the quiet life of a farmer. He's always active. That's what I loved about him, he's always looking, searching. He's really inquisitive.
thinking people want
As an actor, I think most people have a tendency to want to demonstrate that they can act, they can emote.
war russia peace-war
Being in Russia filming War & Peace...filming War & Peace alone is an extraordinary experience, but to be out there was just magical.
optimistic thinking guy
I'm quite a smiley guy, I have my moments, but I think I'm generally of a relatively optimistic nature.
automatic church exists feeling holiday love religious respect reverence sort
I love, when I'm on holiday in cities, going into church and feeling that reverence and that kind of automatic respect: the sort of magic which exists in those kind of religious temples.