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
break broken building burned climb interested looking majority remember rule school spent ticking time top trying
I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't.
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.
two theatre trying
I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you.
theatre trying body
We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of ...a much more integrative experience.
instead projected says written
I sometimes feel I would like to do crazy things with 'Endgame,' where someone says something, but the words, instead of being spoken, are written words projected out of their mouth.
beautiful constantly fires follow opera singers sort touching unlike whatever willing
The very beautiful and very touching thing about opera singers is they are very willing to do whatever you want. Unlike actors, who constantly want to know why they're doing something, opera singers will sort of follow you into the fires of hell.
decide element gives life narrative reflect
'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience.
asks beckett hopeful strips surgical
There's something hopeful about 'Endgame.' Beckett strips everything away and asks what remains. There's this surgical dissection of the soul, but at the bottom, you find shafts of light.
close death people purely various
I've had various people close to me die, and I don't necessarily find the idea of death purely depressing.
music musical passionate
I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.
bad kid mathematics worked
I was very bad at mathematics in school, and I always had the feeling as a kid that when I worked on problems, that I would be wrong.
I was keen to stage 'Faust,' although I find Goethe's 'Faust' indigestible.
experience intensity interested provides suppose
I suppose I'm really interested in theatre that provides an intensity of experience on another level.
brought felt home
I have always felt more at home in a culture that has nothing to do with the one I was born and brought up in.