Rowan Atkinson Quotes

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Rowan Atkinson

Profession : Comedian

Birth : January 6, 1956

I have to say that I've always believed perfectionism is more of a disease than a quality. I do try to go with the flow but I can't let go.

Rowan Atkinson

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

Rowan Atkinson

When I was doing Bean more than I've done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.

Rowan Atkinson

It's not easy to take a sit-com and turn it into a feature.

Rowan Atkinson

No, no, I was only funny on stage, really. I, I, think I was funny as a person toward my classmates when I was very young. You know, when I was a child, up to about the age of 12.

Rowan Atkinson

I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time.

Rowan Atkinson

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And I'm certainly not aware of suppressing more sophisticated ambitions.

Rowan Atkinson

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming.

Rowan Atkinson

I don't much enjoy Back and Forth. I mean, I think it has its own particular qualities, but I think it's inferior to any of the half-hour ones we did.

Rowan Atkinson

And, we put a lot more value, or at least I personally put a lot more value, on the creative values and creative challenges of something than the commercial necessities.

Rowan Atkinson

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.

Rowan Atkinson

And what's interesting about him as a comic character is that the custard pie hardly ever ends up on his face.

Rowan Atkinson

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

Rowan Atkinson

I mean I can do it when I'm very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing.

Rowan Atkinson

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

Rowan Atkinson

Not so much in Canada, but certainly in the US, as I'm sure you know, money is all, and if they can get another 26 programs of the same thing even though it advances the culture or those actor's careers not at all it doesn't matter.

Rowan Atkinson

I would return to the Blackadder character if the opportunity came up. I have no qualms about that at all.

Rowan Atkinson

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don't really need to explain very much at all - you just say he's a spy and he's a little bit theatrical and overblown and smug and he's not very good at his job.

Rowan Atkinson

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.

Rowan Atkinson

Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression.

Rowan Atkinson