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
streets
I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience.
against closer drawings drew egyptian remote saw walls wear
We feel closer to the drawings on the walls of Chauvet than the painting of, say, an Egyptian mural. These artists are not remote ancestors; they are brothers. They saw like us; they drew like us. We wear essentially the same clothes against the cold.
adolescent crushed death failed failure feeling incredibly miller moved people portrayal school subject system
When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves.
arthur artistic deeply embedded met psyche
When I met Miller, for me it wasn't a question of wanting to meet him because it was Arthur Miller; it was a kind of astonishment that I could meet someone who was so deeply embedded in the psyche of my artistic development.
collect might stuff trying
I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.
lives quite sequence
Our lives are a sequence of things. When we're alive, they're continuing, just as my words now are an improvisation. So the idea of 30 years is actually quite nebulous. It's impossible to encapsulate it. All you can do is go: 'what next?'
adored against classical loved music reaction
My parents loved classical music. And my father adored Mozart. But for some reason, I always had a reaction against it.
generally refuse work worried
My work is not generally in the commercial sector. However, I'm not worried by the commercial sector. I refuse to work in any other way except the way that I work.
attending expressed expresses magic music
My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise.
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.
exists mind reality theater
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience.
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.
absolute attempt existed physical push single
I try to push a single idea to its absolute limit. So for all of those ideas that existed in the story, you attempt to find a physical realisation in the space.