Peter Mullan Quotes

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Peter Mullan

Profession : Actor

Birth : November 2, 1959

I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!

Peter Mullan

What point is there to all the wealth and power that America may have if they can't look after its own?

Peter Mullan

In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.

Peter Mullan

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

Peter Mullan

If you are the kind of guy who draws in 100 million people to see his film, you've got every right to be paid accordingly, but I qualify as a character actor. I don't put a bum on a seat.

Peter Mullan

I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

Peter Mullan

The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer.

Peter Mullan

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

Peter Mullan

No hard guy's not scared when another hard guy's knife is coming at you. You're scared, obviously, but you've to act less scared than he is. It's who is going to act less scared.

Peter Mullan

Just in relation to women, it's not that huge an imaginative leap to see the connection between the Taliban and the Catholic Church.

Peter Mullan

As a dad I'm emotionally dedicated but I'm not 'figuring out their life plans'. But of course as I'm telling them about the rights of wrongs I'm thinking back to what I was like at their age.

Peter Mullan

The Vatican has tried to condemn 'The Magdalene Sisters' as a pack of lies and that I've made it all up - I wish I was that good a dramatist - and in terms of public relations, that was the daftest thing they ever did.

Peter Mullan

In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore.

Peter Mullan

In Scotland, we're a colony in more ways than one. So when directors come up to work, there's a very particular way they want Scotland to look like and to behave like.

Peter Mullan

Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion.

Peter Mullan

There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer...', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea.

Peter Mullan

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

Peter Mullan

The films that I really enjoy now are films that are made by, for wont of a better word, mavericks.

Peter Mullan

I'm not a huge kind of visual director. For me, it's all about the acting. There's no greater buzz than working with actors and seeing what they can do and how much they can improve on what you'd written. That will always be on the top of my list. It's a real privilege to see it live before anyone else sees it.

Peter Mullan

I guess I'm part of the art house, but we really have to shake up our ideas, because we're kind of self-parodying ourselves. We go places commercial cinema doesn't go, but sometimes it's to our own detriment.

Peter Mullan