Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea
Stephen Reais an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high-profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 film The Crying Game. He has during later years had important roles in the Hugo Blick TV series The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman, for which he won a BAFTA Award...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 October 1946
CountryIreland
I'd like to own a movie camera - a proper one, with film, not a digital thing. Celluloid has more character.
With Field Day, we'd often play places where they hadn't seen professional actors in 30 years. Everyone in the community would come and see you.
You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.
I always wanted to be in movies but could never figure out a way of getting into them. There were none being made in Ireland at that time.
We didn't have a television, so I grew up with books. This isn't to suggest I'm an intellectual, but I do read a lot because part of acting is an exploration of literature.
If you're playing a lead, you're shaping the movie. When you're playing a supporting role, you've got only a moment to make it count.
When you're playing the part of a saxophone or a trumpet player, both of which I have done, it would be nice to be able to play like John Coltrane, but you can't. Your job is to do something else. And I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I'd be acting Niels Bohr any better if I went and studied physics for five years.
I'm not in denial about technology, but my mother used to say when I was a kid, 'Son, you're handless,' because I couldn't fix anything. My ambition is to be a Luddite.
The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.
I see people with laptops as being enslaved to something they can't live without.
Actors, the good actors, always want to talk about what they're doing, always want to give other people space to do what they're doing.
I never watch TV. I know I'm missing so much, aren't I? I'm probably not. I can't stand popular TV. I've got too much to do to watch it. I know that sounds pretentious and pompous, but there you are.
And I remember being knocked out by The Butcher Boy. My first experience of it was in New York when Patrick McCabe read extracts from it.
You have to know who you are, if you don't you have nightmares.