James Purefoy
James Purefoy
James Brian Mark Purefoyis an English actor, producer and director. He is best known for portraying Mark Antony in the HBO series Rome, former college professor-turned-serial-killer Joe Carroll in the series The Following and Solomon Kane in the feature film Solomon Kane...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth3 June 1964
bedside extreme hospitals maternity places
Hospitals are very extreme places - you can be in a maternity room one minute, and by someone's bedside as they're dying the next.
art cutting useless-stuff
Actors tend to get better with age. You start cutting away the useless stuff and achieving a point of effortlessness and simplicity, which is all you want to do, with any art at all.
stars war men
To be brutally honest, I am a little bit of a Clint Eastwood nerd. Clint Eastwood who was the man who drew me into movies. When everybody else was watching Star Wars, I was watching Fistful of Dollars.
believe play serial-killer
If you're playing Hitler, you don't play Hitler as an asshole. Hitler believed what he was doing was right. Any of those monsters and any serial killer believes in what they're doing. I play it subjectively.
dream thinking want
I think the James Bond thing has sailed. But of course I would want to be a Bond villain. They are great parts. I think it's highly unlikely, but one can always dream.
sexy ugly-things looks
Violence is a very ugly thing. Violence is often so casual on film, and made to look so cool and so sexy, but violence is a repulsive, repugnant act that human beings inflict on each other. It shouldn't seem to be cool and sexy, ever really.
vegetables actors meat
I like doing things that are very wildly different. I find that the meat and vegetables of being an actor is doing things that are completely different, all the time.
pride thinking theatre
I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.
people actors reason
One of the reasons a lot of actors go into the business is that for a short period of time, you get to be other people who you can only fantasize about being, by and large.
real who-i-am giving
Acting gives me a chance to be people I will never be, in real life. I like changing who I am.
jobs years people
I couldn't do the same job for 30 years. That would make me want to kill myself. Other people do it and they're very happy doing it, but for me, that's not what I want. I like changing things, all the time.
acting next way
What I went into the acting business for was to have a certain amount of chaos in my life. I don't know what I'm doing next. It's exciting. That's the way I like it.
television throat
I like television that grabs you by your throat.
want tvs life-is
My life is really precious. I don't want to spend it watching ambient TV that just drifts through you. I've got better things to do.