Simon McBurney
Simon McBurney
Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate, Friends with Money, The Golden Compass, The Duchess, Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth25 August 1957
exists mind reality theater
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience.
audience clear create god particular reality specific time
With the theatre, for God's sake, everything makes sense. You create a clear sequential reality for a specific audience at one particular time.
conscious festival prize recall remember
I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'
aspect dealing element matter occurs separate subject visual work
I don't really think about a visual aspect to the work at all; I just think about making the piece. And everything that occurs visually comes out of the subject matter you are dealing with so that I find it difficult to treat the visual element as a separate entity.
audience consciousness longer project unified until
In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.
britain call french interested mean people says visual
In France, they call the people who come to the theatre 'les spectateurs'; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here.
hard
In Japan, sometimes it's hard to know what you are looking at.
delicious delivered fact imagination milk seem
I remember the fact that milk was delivered every day by a milkman. In summer, my mother would make what now seem in my middle-aged imagination the most delicious iced milkshakes.
attracted deal opens
I'm naturally attracted to something I don't understand because when you try to deal with something you don't understand, it opens a door into another world.
entertainment everybody honourable indeed tradition
In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else.
million time
In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo.
art exists form
Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone.
call collective driven fragment matter might movement music subject text theatre
Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV.
easier except knows movies nobody work
As an actor, it's much easier for me to get work in the movies because nobody knows who I am except for the work that I've done in another movie. I really enjoy that.