Jude Law quotes:

I`ve always thought Prince Charming in Cinderella was the most boring role; I`d rather be the Wicked Witch.

There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.

I've always thought Prince Charming in 'Cinderella' was the most boring role; I'd rather be the Wicked Witch.

I'm not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I've done it's pretty obvious I'm not going to make a 'Mission: Impossible.'

I'm only wanted by directors for the image I give off, and it makes me angry. I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.

Making an effort is polite, and getting ready and looking after yourself makes an event more fun.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

I've always been someone who's really tried to live in the here and now. My memory isn't very good so maybe that's why, but it just seems like I've been living this life, my current chapter, for a really long time and I don't really remember what it was like before. It's just been sort of ingrained in me. What I deal with day to day.

I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general.

I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents.

My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing.

I'm kind of ashamed to be a celebrity. I don't understand wanting to read about other people's dirty laundry. I think celebrity is the biggest red herring society has ever pulled on itself.

I suppose I'm intrigued with the bad traits of society, because I'm a part of society, and the bad traits pose the dangerous questions for our future.

I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.

We all have times when we go home at night and pull out our hair and feel misunderstood and lonely and like we're falling. I think the brain is such that there is always going to be something missing.

I've always liked what Thomas More said in Utopia, which is that in Utopia every person is allowed their own lifestyle and religion but no one is allowed to stand on a soapbox and tell others that theirs is right. I thought that was brilliant. Brilliant.

I'm a massive comic book fan. I was buying weekly installments of "The Watchmen", and "From Hell", and "Parallax" and "Johnny Nemo". I was a huge comic book fan as a kid and I still am. Me and my youngest son are both comic book nerds together; make models and stuff.

Success, and even life itself, wouldn't be worth anything if I didn't have my wife and children by my side. They mean everything to me.

In a way it was like washing your laundry in public and, yep, there you go, you've seen my underwear. And now I feel like there's nothing left, you've seen it all and I can get on.

I never thought I had to forge a family, but it felt the most natural thing that ever happened to me - meeting someone and becoming a father.

If I have a look around at the moment I feel great relief because finally others are entering the limelight. Men like Robert Pattinson must now play the Adonis. For me it was always a restraint, a restriction.

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really.

I think everyone goes through chapters in their life and there was a time when I wasn't feeling terribly positive about what I was contributing to film, or wasn't feeling as if I was going in the direction I wanted and I re-evaluated what I was doing.

You heard it from the heart, you saw it in their eyes. Then I got used to the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers and my feet. That for me was the essence of the battle.

I think it's a bigger risk following a part that plays up your looks than it is to try and carve out a career as an actor.

I sometimes shy away because I don't want to be too 'showy-offy' but the older I get I think, 'You have a handkerchief, put it in your pocket.'

You can't spend your life apologizing.

I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see.

You have a handkerchief, put it in your pocket.

I don't consider myself any great sage of fashion or style, whatever people may want to think.

I honestly have no interest in celebrity whatsoever. If anything, I always cringe at it because it takes away from what I am, which is an actor who wants to be better and do better things.

I feel more and more at ease, because I think the older I get, the less pressure there is. People say, 'Well, he's not cutting edge because he's not in his twenties, so he's not expected to be.'

Face it, I didn't become famous until I took my clothes off.

If you want to change who you are, you have to change what you do.

Women like bad boys"¦Being a good boy never worked for me.

I suppose that some days I wake up I have to wake up and be responsible, reliable and down to earth, and some days I don't.

You cant spend your life apologizing.

A job is not just a job. It's who you are.

The greatest gift an actor can have is not revealing who he is but through the parts he plays. Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone wants to know everything all the time and I think it takes away part of the fun of acting that we have to go through that all the time.

I've never been a fan of just doing. I like to do things for a reason.

You are [as an actor] aware that you don't want to repeat stuff, but you want to use what has worked. But you don't want to be accused of just going over the old thing, you know? You want it to start growing a little bit more.

I'm keen to do as little or as much reading and watching as the director may advise, and often off that you kind of stem into other things that you find of influence, perhaps the things that you're watching. It's a good excuse to get to know a new profession, or a new approach, or a new era. It's about authenticity. It's about having the confidence to really feel that you're saturated and know the world you're about to step into and understand the person you're about to be.

Rafferty [Law] plays three or four instruments. He is very gifted. Whereas I pick instruments up and kind of stare at them and go, "I can't ever possibly play this." And I don't!

When someone like Steven Soderbergh asks you to do a film you know you're in good hands. You know it's going to be slick, and it's going to be intelligent, and it's going to have a kind of style to it, and I would probably have done anything to be really honest.

There are always seasons to a career and perhaps always the grass is often greener, you're often looking at other people's careers going, "Damn, they get all the good roles. Why didn't I read that? Why didn't they ask me to do that?"

When you suddenly appear on the scene and you are the new face, everything centers on you. I experienced this in my mid-20s and I found it rather hard.

The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush. I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law'.

I only want to do the kind of work that I would like to go and see, that`s going to teach me something new, that involves working with people I can learn something from and I can give something to.

I would never know how to sell myself as a sex symbol. That's not how I'm programmed.

It was the shaving that bothered me the most. I'm not a great fan of shaving and I had to be really clean-shaven, hands, head, hairline, all the fluff off my face, everything except my eyebrows, so this sheen, this kind of polish they used on me, would stick.

Look, how many stories have I broken? Hundreds. How many have proved to be untrue? There isn't one.

I hadn't read or heard a lot about [Tom] Wolfe until I read this script, and in that way I think it was really clever to write a piece about him instead of Max Perkins,[Ernest] Hemingway, [John] Fitzgerald, or others that people have strong opinions of already.

You can compare Holmes and Watson to great Shakespearean characters, in a way. They've been played by hundreds of actors over the years, and each one is a different interpretation - the source material can take that form of interpretation.

The other nice thing about the robes is that they keep you cool in the summer, and we were filming sometimes in Rome, where it was sometimes over 100 degrees.

I worry about that terribly because the public eye can bring all sorts of unwanted intrusions and problems. But he's treading his own path. I think the modeling is something that Rafferty Law sees as a pastime and something to maybe give him a bit of pocket money. He's a musician mostly. He's in college studying music, which he takes very seriously and I think that is something that he will concentrate on in the future.

I need someone to give me a part where I play the piano so I can learn it. I would love that.

Landing a role now is not based on my looks - more on my acting ability.

The only film I ever made for money was something called Music From Another Room, which I really didn`t like.

I don't want to do anything that I'm not passionate about.

Personally speaking there's only so long you can go from film to film to film. There's an inspiration an actor gets from the stage.

When I think about it like that, it feels like a burden. But that won't mean I'll be single for the rest of my life - I hope. I feel very settled with myself in my world. I don't feel as needy and desperate to prove things about myself. In my twenties I was very keen to achieve this and disprove this and that. Now I enjoy just being able to concentrate on my children and my work and myself.

There is no defence for my actions which I sincerely regret. [on an affair with nanny Daisy Wright]

[Tom] Wolfe's books offered a whole new world to step into, and whilst at times you could accuse him of being somewhat long-winded, he had an incredible quality of prose and a bravery of writing from the heart. He believed in being autobiographical at all times.

If there is a will there is a way.

When you got source material, whether it's a play or a book - a great writer often appreciates being adapted and developed. It's like when you go see a production of a great play and they are always different. There is always room for interpretation.

London is my home... I know what's right and wrong here, and it's nice to have somewhere familiar to go back to.

Every so often you get to play wonderful characters maybe at the wrong time in your life. Sometimes, you get to play terrible characters at a really great time in your life. Sometimes, the right character comes along at the right time.

There is something nice about wearing the same thing everyday, having that go-to.

I think the message of peace is for everyone.

It's interesting to see how people bring different things to them. I think it comes down to the universal appeal of the Holmes-Watson that they can keep being discovered in different ways.

I always prefer things straight up, not cold or watered down. Not big on cocktails either.