Douglas Booth quotes:

I love the challenge of playing characters forced on life-changing emotional journeys. To work on a project with Billy Crudup and Sam Rockwell is just a dream come true.

I loved 'Gladiator' when I was young. Russell Crowe was a big inspiration; the fact that he plays my father in 'Noah' was amazing.

When I do my own wardrobe, I try to wear a designer from each of the countries I'm visiting: Tom Ford for New York, Hugo Boss for Germany, Burberry for England.

I love history, and Churchill is one of my favorite people to study. He's a fascinating, fascinating man.

It's better to think of life as a proper journey with a beginning and an end. Maybe, I can settle for being immortalised on screen.

Articles always end up being about my appearance. I had a conversation with Jude Law: he told me people's obsession with looks goes away after a while.

On a Friday night, I like to go out because my friends, who have been working normal hours, just want to let go after a stressful week at work.

I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.

The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones, but it's not like working a 9-5 job and only having two or three weeks off a year. I may not have seen my girlfriend for two or three months, but then we can spend two or three months together solidly.

We live in a beauty-obsessed age and success sometimes appears to hinge solely on the presentation of an image that is acceptable to the press.

It's great to fall head over heels in love at a fast pace, and nothing's more romantic, but you need to look after yourself.

I saw 'The Fountain' because my friend came over one day and said, 'This is my favorite movie I've ever seen. Please watch this,' and I watched it, and that was amazing.

What annoys people is the idea that somebody has everything, and they're allowed to get away with anything. It's the sense of entitlement that gets up people's noses.

Even to this day, when someone says something derogatory about Boy George, it still upsets and offends me. Part of me will always be quite attached to him.

It's fun to play a dark character, but you go home at the end of the day not feeling very good about yourself. You go away feeling dirty. It seeps into the air.

If a rock band throws a TV set out of a hotel window, it's seen as anti-Establishment.

I'm definitely interested in taking on roles where I don't look like myself. But I'm not saying I'm going to go out of my way to play a disabled person in order to win an Oscar.

External beauty is a bizarre thing to me.

I am huge water sports fan. I love to jet ski, speedboat, water ski. So I love to get away to somewhere sunny and just get on the water and have some fun with some friends.

I love art. My sister is an artist and my mother is a painter, so it is very much in the family. I haven't ever wanted to be a fine artist myself - my sister robbed me of my artistic talent, I think.

I'm not a player; I'm just a lovely guy, and I can show a girl a good time.

I've never been aware of the difference between so-called posh actors and working-class actors.

I love clothes and do sort of change my wardrobe a lot. But a thousand dollar jacket? I'd rather spend it on an experience, like traveling.

The 'boy next door' parts I get offered, I don't find interesting.

I fell in love at 14 and I remember that mad, tense feeling and all the mad things you do for the person - all those extremes and all the stuff you don't mind putting up with.

One of the biggest things I used to struggle with was about things like going on holiday. Whereas all your friends can talk about something and plan something all year long, I know that I'm probably going to be away and I'm going to miss all of it. If a job comes up, you just can't be there.

I love to go see films, even on my own. I just walk to the nearest cinema. There's nothing better than watching a movie alone; you can just sit there and zone in.

My grandfather was a great chef.

The first lead that I ever played was a young Boy George when I was seventeen. I shaved my eyebrows off. That's as far from leading man looks as you can get.

It's a bit of a cliche, but I think girls like to get flowers. I think books are quite romantic, too. If you can find an interesting book, that brings something out in your partner that can be very romantic.

I believe if you're prepared to kill the animal, you're allowed to eat it.

I turned down one of the big young adult franchises.

GQ,' you've been patiently and stylishly educating me forever. To be truly stylish, you have to be kind and courteous.

I may not have seen my girlfriend for two or three months, but then we can spend two or three months together solidly. It's swings and roundabouts.

I love to dance and dance all night long.

I'm a huge festival fan. I love to dance and dance all night long.

I took up drama and did so much extracurricular work, like the National Youth Theatre and Guildhall's Saturday school. Acting is where I felt most comfortable and how I wanted to express myself.

Every year I look at the 'GQ' Best-Dressed List and have thought what an honour it must be to be included. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my own face in there.

I suppose 'Worried About the Boy' was a brave choice, but only in the sense that if I didn't get it right, my career would be over before it had begun.

Noah,' for me, wasn't a decision about taking on the Bible. It was about working with Darren Aronofsky.

When I was younger, I looked a lot older than I was. They have these working laws in England where you have to be 16: if you're over 16, you don't have to be restrained by working hours and things like that. In America, it's actually 18.

For me, if Shakespeare was around today, he'd be writing screenplays - a big Hollywood movie.

The grittier, the dirtier, the worse I can look, the happier I am. It takes the pressure off.

I like to wake up late, around 11 A.M., especially if I have been out the night before. Then I go to brunch with either my friends or my girlfriend. I then like to just chill out: read the papers, read some scripts and then take it very easy. If it's sunny, I go for a walk with my dog, Niles, in the countryside.

Yeah, 'Requiem for a Dream' - it'll put you off a lot of things, that film, that's for sure.

I looked on IMDB, at the message boards there, and someone had posted something about a sheep having more talent than me.

The British actors I've met and worked with have all been very supportive of each other.

You may have a broken heart, but you may find someone else.

Romeo and Juliet were stunning and beautiful, but a lot of the other characters surrounding them were caricatures.

David Cameron was a good-looking chap in his day!

I think I'm low-maintenance.

I saw 'Othello' at the National Theatre in London, and it was so stunning. I was so moved. It's beautiful.

I have always wanted to work with Judy Dench, and that hasn't happened yet, so that would be fun.

Dickens writes such brilliant characters and stories, and his themes and social commentary are still so relevant. I think that's why he's still so loved today.

To be able to experience a thousand different lives within my lifetime is something that always appealed to me. I wasn't content with just being one person for the rest of my life.

I tried to forget about playing Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet' and just think about him as a normal guy, as a normal character, and just try and approach him the same I would every other character.

I loved 'Harry Potter' growing up. I'm dyslexic and a slow reader, but I could get through the thick ones in days!

I just think if you're going to do something, do it properly.

Sometimes a script comes along that really makes you sit up and pay attention... 'Life at These Speeds' has an emotional intensity that really kicked me in the guts.

Darren Aronofsky is on another level. You get lost in a scene, and he'll come over and whisper something in your ear, and suddenly everything makes sense.

It's important to read as much as you can because you never know when you will find the best script that you want to do next. I'm always quite picky in what I read and what I go for.

I want to be challenged, I want to keep challenging myself - whether or not it's changing yourself physically or just pushing yourself to a certain extreme. I get bored quite easily so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.

The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones.

What is life unless you're having a good time? I don't really have a plan; I just try to dip my toes in different ponds.

For the moment, whenever I read, it is normally scripts. You start a book and then you think, 'I should be reading these five scripts.

As an actor, Hollywood would be a horrible place to go if you weren't actually invited.

I've spent a lot of my teenage years working on sets. I've missed out on more than just playing rugby, but I think I've managed to keep my feet on the ground and keep my friends around me.

I've always had a social awareness. My favorite channel on TV is BBC News 24. For a while, I had to have it on repeat in my house. I've always been interested in what's going on in the world.

I wanted to become an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is one of the main drama schools in London where you go when you are older. But I was doing the junior one when I was a kid. And some friends there had agents. I was fourteen and I was like, "I want an agent! It sounds awesome!" I had no idea what that was. I thought those guys looked like men in black. They were hanging around in suits all the time. So I luckily got a very good agent in London and started auditioning. And then when I was 16, I got my first film and I've been working ever since.

I was lucky enough to get a very good agent at the age of 15, and got my first film when I was 16, so it's been rolling on since then.

I think it's more important to seek the truth than to try and be perfect, to be honest.

I dreamt of being an actor ever since I was young.

I grew up in London, and that's where I spend most of my time. Unless I have a really good reason not to be, I'll always be in London.

I looked pretty crazy but at the time, you don't think anything of it. You think, "I've got an amazing job. I'm working and this is cool." I remember I was being fit to go to a premiere for something at Burberry and Christopher Bailey, who designs the clothes there, saw a picture of me and I looked weird. I had short black hair, hardly any eyebrows, I looked very very thin and he went, "We need to put Douglas in a campaign." So four days later, I was shooting a Burberry campaign because he had seen me looking crazy from the show so that was kind of funny.

I love to ride horses. I've ridden since I was a kid so I got to do some riding, which was a lot of fun. But most of the stunts were left to the girls. It's the girls rescuing the guys mostly. So it was kind of really kick-ass, girl power. It was wonderful to watch. It was particularly sexy. They would come in and just slay in these choreographed pentagram of death fight scenes. It was pretty impressive.

The movie is so fun. I've done period pieces before but nothing with this twist. And the movie is just full of such wonderful people, such young actors - people like Matt Smith that I've been friends with for a while.

I'm quite severely dyslexic so I struggle with acting in certain ways. I always have to put in triple the amount of effort, which would always frustrate me a lot. I suppose that some people can just look at a script once and know it. That's not me. I really have to spend a bit of time with the lines. But it's my job and I've got better and better at it. If you're learning a lot, things start going quicker. Doing the lines with repetition and you just get it in your head somehow.

If you don't practice for three days, everyone will notice." It's something you have to really maintain. So unfortunately, I don't play it that often but I may take it up again. If you don't play for a while, you just can't hit the notes. It's like going to the gym. If you go and do weights, you can lift x amount of weight and if you don't go for ages, you've gotta start again and start from the beginning. So it's a bit like that. It's just a muscle.

I like to travel, but honestly I really like to just be at home in London and spend time with my friends.

I love movies. That's still my favorite form of escape, and I usually end up going alone. I love to go and sit in the theater by myself, no distractions.

I'm still in the first baby steps of my career, so I've got so much to learn and so much to figure out.

I don't think I've reached perfection by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe someday I'll become a perfectionist.

When I do go to L.A., it is usually for a reason - to meet with a director or something - but I'm always so happy to go back to London.

I had friends who ran off to become ski instructors or worked in cool bars, and I often envied them, but I know I'd quickly become bored with that kind of life. I always need to push myself.

I would be the last person on earth to complain about what I do - I feel very fortunate and I know there are a million jobs in the world that are much, much harder - but it's not always an easy or glamorous thing to do, that's for sure.

I remember someone saying to my mom that it must be so glamorous to have a child acting in movies. They had no idea how hard it was for her.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I am dyslexic, so I really struggled in school. I knew I was never going to sit behind a desk or do something involving numbers.

As a kid, I used to run around our garden waving a stick and pretending to be a million different people. That's why I became an actor, really.

I got cast in a school play and I fell in love with that. I felt comfortable on stage and found out it was a brilliant way of expressing myself and I was happy and I could do it.

I got to be about 13 and everyone started playing guitars and being in rock bands. There was no place for me with my trumpet and I wasn't cool anymore. Although now if I played the trumpet it would be the coolest thing in the world.

More often than not, if you've got a good director and a good script you can't really go wrong.

Sometimes things are nothing on paper, but a genius director turns it into something amazing.

The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face.

You can have a great script, or a great director and a bad script, and get a great movie. Nothing really guarantees anything.

I'd love to work with Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, but these are dreams I don't need to rush to achieve. I'll be ready to make those movies when I'm ready to make those movies and they're ready to make them with me, if they ever want to.

I'm just trying to choose interesting, quirky projects or things with interesting directors or just movies that have a lot of people I like attached to them so I know I'm going to have a good time.

It's really important to take time for yourself because if you don't know what it is like to be a real person and spend time with a sense of normality, how can you play normal people in films?

The most romantic things are very small, kind gestures from people you love.

Obviously, you never shoot the scenes of a film in order or only very rarely.

I live for challenges. In my career, all I want to do is try to challenge myself and have a varied career.

Each character you play has its own set of characteristics, for want of a better word.

Being blinded by young love. I remember the feeling, when I first fell in love - you don't see the world the same way that other people see it. You don't see the same boundaries.

When you're forced to watch something in school, you never really enjoy it, you sort of rebel against it in a certain way.

I actually wanted to be a jazz musician first. My grandparents introduced me to Louis Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong so I took up the trumpet and just did that every day and practiced that.

I live by myself, which I love. In this industry, you're so often surrounded by people and busy and talking to people. It's kind of lovely when you get home to just chill out.

[London is] one of the best cities in the world. There is just so much culture there and so much history and so much diversity. It's just a perfect place to grow up. I studied at the Guildhall every Saturday so I'd always be in town every weekend doing that. I was kind of a city boy really.

I suppose to a certain degree. London's my favorite place on the planet and the reason for that is its fantastic diversity.

Going over to Lesvos in Greece and meeting some of these poor refugees who have just made the treacherous sea crossing opened my eyes in a way I can't even being to describe. It's put a fire in my belly to really try to do something, the little I can do.

Some people can very easily switch off and be guilt free, not that what I'm doing is about guilt, but they can completely disconnect and not care because it doesn't affect them. I've always really cared about what happens and felt a certain responsibility.

The best thing I've ever done for a girl hopefully is make them happy. Isn't that the most romantic thing you can do?

I've said I won't eat meat until the whole world can eat it responsibly, which is going to be hard. It's becoming more and more fashionable to eat more and more meat and they've just made it fashionable to eat meat in the east in China, which is a massive population.

I think we can't feed the amount of people that are on this planet the way we are doing it.

Have you seen Cowspiracy? It takes a lot more land to feed a meat eater than to feed a vegan or a vegetarian. It's something I'd love to get into but it's very hard to persuade people to stop things they've been doing for a long time. So maybe it needs to start with the next generation. Everyone needs to raise their children with a bit more responsibility.

I like to cook Vietnamese pho or vegetarian curries. I need to cook more but I need somebody to cook with.

I live alone so I always just eat out. When I'm in another relationship, then maybe we'll start cooking together.

I love Leonardo DiCaprio. He just makes really great films with great directors. He has great relationships with directors but also has a great social awareness. I think he balances his work with his responsibilities to his world, the environment, things like that very well. I'm very impressed by him and I admire him a lot. And other actors like Joaquin Phoenix, I just look at him and marvel at his unexpectedness, just his work really.

Ultimately I'll probably end up going out with an actress again. But an architect would be cool. They need to do something creative. I'm attracted to talent. But it would maybe be healthier if it wasn't in the industry.

When I meet girls, I pray that they don't know who I am. But I know that's limiting myself quite a lot.

I'd imagine a great date would be to go skiing. Imagine going skiing. Go ski with someone, if they can ski.

With our job, you often meet people through work. I've had two long-term relationships, from 14 to 18 and 19 to 21. One I met at school and the other I met on a job so who knows where I'll meet the next person.