Paterson Joseph Quotes

Paterson Joseph

Profession : Actor

Birth : June 22, 1964

For casting purposes, it seems I was born in the wrong skin.

Paterson Joseph

It does good things to one, to feel that you are included in the story of your nation.

Paterson Joseph

I live in France, I don't live in the States and I don't live in London, so I'm not immersed in the profession. I come in, do my work, and then I go home again, to a place where nobody knows me. So it makes it trickier to pursue a film career, or even any kind of structured career, not living in the places where it's happening.

Paterson Joseph

I wanted to be in a costume drama. Yes, I like them. I enjoy the leap of imagination and the richer-than-modern-language they often contain. I wanted to wear a ruff, or an ornate waistcoat, even a foppish, stylish wig. But not as a tray-toting, background figure. I wanted to be a protagonist.

Paterson Joseph

It sometimes feels that I was born in the wrong time.

Paterson Joseph

It's only later that you realise 'All of those heroes of mine were white.' Not because I didn't know any better, but because I had no other choices.

Paterson Joseph

Whenever I do comedy, my trouble is that I laugh too much - I enjoy myself too much, so it's quite expensive to have me as a comedy actor! I just giggle at everything and everyone!

Paterson Joseph

The first time I went to see theatre, I was in it.

Paterson Joseph

I was reluctant to play Othello. It seemed like such a 'black actor' cliche, but when I finally did, in my 40s, I related to him deeply - his brittleness, his ability to fall into an all-encompassing love. I could see where the madness could get in.

Paterson Joseph

About two months after I'd finished filming 'The Beach' in Thailand, I found myself on a roof in Croydon at 2:00 A.M. in the rain with one spotlight on me, a student director and her technician trying to film me as an angel who'd fallen from the sky. Then the lights went out. And I thought, 'Yeah, you're back.'

Paterson Joseph

Welcome to Britain in 2020. When we march for Black Lives Matters here, the next day the far-right marches.

Paterson Joseph

I think the god of acting is kind to me.

Paterson Joseph

As an actor you try to find reasons for actions taken by your character, which is what I did with Kamal, so he is not just a two-dimensional villainous character. Starting with his name, Hadley - this is such an English sounding name, I figured there must have been a white man who was part of his family line.

Paterson Joseph

This is the story that I've grown up with in this country, Black protest is always seen as violent. In fact, Black celebration is always seen as potentially violent. Our Notting Hill carnival, which is the biggest street carnival in the world, is always seen beforehand as some sort of fearful thing where it's all going to be crime and nothing else.

Paterson Joseph

Babylon' has definitely added a degree of sympathy to my opinion of those at the top of the major police forces in the U.K.

Paterson Joseph

What I thought about multi-ethnic Britain pre-Windrush and what I now know has, for me, changed for ever the meaning of the words black British.

Paterson Joseph

There was nothing around me that would have given me heroes who happened to be Black. And I don't think anybody can understand how that feels, unless you are that person. It's very difficult to understand what it's like to be shut out of a narrative.

Paterson Joseph

Great African-American stars who can command major theatre and film roles in successful international projects are not uncommon: James Earl Jones, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg and Jamie Foxx, to name just a few.

Paterson Joseph

My career started off very well in classical theatre, a genre that I shouldn't perhaps have done so well in. As a result it became clear to me that I had a bit of an outlier status. I was never part of the black theatre scene, for example.

Paterson Joseph

It takes a long time to shoot 'Peep Show' whenever I do a scene - that's probably why I don't do much stuff on it!

Paterson Joseph