Rhys Ifans quotes:

Whereas Superman is a godlike guy from another planet and Batman is this mysterious, unknowable billionaire, everyone in 'Spider-Man' is human and flawed.

Spider-Man is a school boy that's looking for his parents.

I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me.

I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.

Acting is a tough, difficult job with long unsociable hours, although it can be a brilliant job, too. I don't want to complain too much, as nurses, farmers and teachers are out working long hours.

As a Welsh speaker, I'm very conscious of how activism can effect real change.

Every time the Tories get a bit of power, they rip off all the things I love... The mining industry. Milk.

Shyness is invariably a suppression of something. It's almost a fear of what you're capable of.

Each generation needs a 'Spider-Man' to mirror their angst.

What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.

You know you are in a good film when it affects the audience.

I honed my passion for acting in theatre and education, and I think it's important not to belittle the child audience.

It's every boy's dream to play Captain Hook.

There's two kinds of rock n' roll casualty: the one that has huge success and adoration, and then suddenly it stops. Or there's when you're in a band: it is all-consuming, so then you have the dream of that, and then the dream's taken away from you even before it happens.

It is joyous for any actor to enter other grounds of consciousness and thought. At the end of the day, we just all like dressing up and playing around.

I'll move back to Wales if and when I have children. I want them to speak the language I speak, but I love living in London. It's my favourite city in the whole world. I love it because it's not England, it's London.

If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.

I've worked with Hollywood stars, but the reason most of the Hollywood stars I've worked with are Hollywood stars is that they're excellent actors, so I've been very lucky.

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.

All punk rockers hate Christmas.

I come from a culture where the pub is the centre of the community. The pub is the Internet. It's where information is gathered, collated and addressed.

We're in an age of enlightenment, and we have a choice as a society which path to take.

I've reached a point in my career when I can demand certain conditions, and one of them is a weekend break every three weeks during the shoot.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

Very often, actors have to face being rejected time and again, and we must remember that the red carpet lasts just a minute.

I've done a lot of Shakespeare onstage, and I'm not convinced that the Earl of Oxford was the author of all those works, but I am convinced that the Stratfordian William Shakespeare was not. My feeling is that it was an amalgamation of many writers, in the same way that most films are a collaborative endeavor.

I just don't take myself as seriously anymore. But as a result of that, I am taking myself more seriously. My ego has gone on holiday, and it can't get a flight back home.

The strange thing is, if I was speaking to drama students about the thing that you should do if you're lucky enough to know or to meet the character that you're playing, I'd say, 'It's obvious: you quiz them diligently about their experience.'

I'm a passionate Welshman. I have a culinary relationship with language: I taste what I say because I have two languages, and each informs the other.

I don't sit around with other actors and talk about the pain and the magic of acting.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss.

I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.

I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss.

I go to work, and I work very hard. I'm loyal, generous, true, kind, fair - all those boxes are ticked. I'm going to Heaven.

Welsh women aren't the most tactile unless they're your relatives. And then you don't want them to be.

The whole film genre is one of deceit. It is the suspension of disbelief. That's what all theater and all film is based on.

I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time.

I think Liverpool generates generosity which rubs off - it's a good place to work and to party.

I'm Welsh. We didn't do 'Peter Pan.' We have far more ancient legends to be put to sleep with.

You look at any culture, and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure. It is just idiotic to criminalise any substance, I think.

I'm becoming more indulgent and less giving as an actor as I get older. I'm immersing myself more in roles emotionally.

In terms of partying and reckless abandon, I'm Don Juan. But, in terms of my heart, I'm the most loyal man you'll ever meet.

I think that Liverpool's particular modern history lends itself to the cinema better than London in many ways. When you go to Liverpool, you absorb that whole sound and humour.

When you act, you've got to be like a poet or a musician. It's not about evidence before court. It's not a forensic subject. It's poetry; it's a completely different place.

If you had to find a period in history that would equate to what the Internet has presented us with now, it would be Elizabethan England. It was a world in flux.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.

Being on tour is a giggle.

I don't have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That's what children do, and that's what CGI enables us to do.

I consider projects very deeply, but there's always a point in your life where there's a bit of randomity.

More than any other super-hero, 'Spider-Man' presents us with something very local in its ethics. It's not messianic. It's far more tangible.

If it is not scary, it is not worth doing.

When I'm not filming, I do rock n' roll; when I'm not doing rock n' roll, I do filming.

But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed].

Don't be late. Learn your lines. Be good to people. Treat people nice.

I freely admit that I am a bit of a misfit.

If I'd been a rock star, I'd probably now be dead.

In Wales, singing and storytelling are party skills, not professions.

My work is my way of expressing myself without being arrested.

The joy of a period film is that you're taken to another world. The costumes determine the way you move, and then consequently the way you breathe. And then, the way you breathe effects the way you think.

Whenever you're doing film for television and you look at the budget that you have, which is much more constricted than a movie budget, you think, "God, are they going to be able to do what they say they are?"