Dominic Cooper quotes:

Grief jumps out at you when you're least expecting it.

I kept on digging the hole deeper and deeper looking for the treasure chest until I finally lifted my head, looked up and realized that I had dug my own grave.

I look like a turnip with hair in the morning!

I had a really creative teacher at primary school. He used to get us doing things such as singing Spandau Ballet in drag in the choir, and I remember loving it.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

I like being in focus, in the moment, changing and adapting and creating and advancing a scene.

When you work with people who are so passionate about their product it's kinda inspiring.

I grew up loving cars. It was completely and utterly, without a doubt, my childhood dream. Whether your childhood dream progresses or changes, you turn into a man and you probably shouldn't still have that same dream.

It's a good feeling to come away from a day's work feeling like you've achieved something. Tired brain is good.

Any son of a dictator, I'm sure, has major issues with their relationship with their father.

Especially with comedy, you take massive risks because ultimately you're trying to be funny. If you're not funny, then it's really embarrassing and you look stupid.

I think skilled salesmen have the ability to work out who you are and pick out aspects of your personality. They almost manipulate you, in a way, to make you buy their product.

I think you grow up wanting to be a racing driver. Then it dawns on you that it's not going to happen.

Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living.

One of the exciting and enjoyable aspects of acting is being in the environment with another actor.

I remember, as a young man, wanting to experience a car going at those speeds and being visually nourished by something which I loved so much. And I wanted to race fast cars and have a good time.

I would love an old classic car, or something like that. I'd get something much more subtle than any of those cars. The Lamborghinis were unbelievable to drive and to sit in and to film in. I loved the sensation because I love driving, so I appreciate them for what they are. But, I couldn't go into a showroom and buy something of that expense.

You never know really what anyone thinks about you - that's why all my closest friends are ones I've had since my schooling days when I was 5. And I surround myself with people who I trust and who know me.

I stupidly ignored education completely. I found it dull and I preferred to cause chaos and have fun. I regret this massively now.

There is nothing I hate more than meeting someone who has forgotten the art of conversing.

There are probably only a certain number of people who can understand or tolerate how long a job will take and what demands it puts on you. And why should they? It breeds a strange kind of selfishness immersing yourself in a character for so long.

We want to pigeonhole things and people, but it is absurd to regard me just as a furry wig-and-britches actor.

It's funny how you have to keep changing, or showing that you are capable of doing something different from people's expectations. People really only do remember you from the last thing you've done, or desperately want to put you into a position that they think you're capable of.

I don't think there's ever a point when you turn to yourself and go, 'Yes, I've made a success of this career path.' You never feel like you've done your best work. You always think you could be better.

There's only so much you can do of trying, finding yourself very close to getting a part and then not getting it.

In whatever work environment, whether we admit it or not, there is always a little part of us that has been or will be tempted by a lifestyle for the wrong reasons.

For the three years I was in school training to be an actor, I was told, 'It's very unlikely you'll work at all on the stage or in film', so I feel I have to take all the opportunities I can.

It happens very rarely that your ears perk up about a certain project.

Yes, I want children and I can't wait to have that closeness with someone - to bring someone into the world. But, I really don't know when.

I've always been astonished by how wonderful he [Timur Bekmambetov] makes something look for so little. I think he shoots action like no one else.

I think women are great drivers. To be honest, I've only been in one car accident - one of my best friends, his wife was driving. She went into oncoming traffic, our car flipped almost four times. I didn't even have time to put on a seat belt, because they'd just picked me up.

You should always think about things that excite you and that you can learn from.

So, you just have to keep pushing yourself with regards to the choices you make, to make sure they're very different from one another, I suppose. I don't know. I don't have any answer for any of that. I can't help but just say yes to lots of work that comes my way because I'm so relieved and so desperately excited and pleased that anyone could possibly offer me any work anyway.

I would like to do any way possible that Howard Stark can make a return. He's such a fun character to play, and I really believe that he could make quite an exciting character to watch more of. The flawed entrepreneur, the kind of crazy playboy, from that era is an exciting concept.

I need something different [roles], always something just slightly different, that pushes you and challenges you.

I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.

The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country, but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

I suppose theres an anger in all of us. Some hidden rage that you keep at bay.

The stunt guys are absolutely brilliant, but all this stuff [a scene] always looks better when you do it yourself.

You want to know if anyone's going to go see your film. You shouldn't worry about it or get hung up on it. So yea, you kind of monitor it.

I'm always in awe of directors because they're just holding so much stuff in the air. They've got so many decisions that they need to be making and they have to have the complete overall look of what the piece of artwork is.

There's this exhausting energy from you getting your lines out and your words right, especially if it's a complicated scene. And as soon as the camera is off you and goes on the other person, you're talking garbled garbage and you feel so sorry for them because you've lost the will to live, after 18 hours of saying those lines. That's terribly unfair. So, I do love the quick-paced nature of it.

I'm sure everyone feels this way, but it's hard to have a proper opinion of yourself or how things are or how you expected them to be or how far removed they are from how you expect them to be. On the one hand, you're extraordinarily grateful and terribly excited, but on the other, I stop and go, "I wonder what the future does hold."

It's a very, very exciting time, but you can't help thinking or not quite knowing how it's seen from the outside. You're constantly in a state of terror or regret, not quite knowing how things are going to pan out, or whether you've made the right decisions. But, maybe that's just what it's like. Maybe that's just the life of it.

You must believe in your own instincts and your own instincts at any particular time and believe that they were the right ones for any given situation. So, there's no point ever of kind of regretting something because you can't properly remember the exact circumstances in which you were playing out this particular scene. You have to believe in your intuition and your instinct at that moment.