#jn quotes

[lalisachu]

billboard interview

[notjustamaninahat]

Happy Birthday, Jeremy Northam!

1st December 1961

Acting is a practical craft. I always admired the day-after-day professionalism of the working actor. The actual experience of being an actor is not necessarily the way it's been portrayed. There are mundane elements to the work which require a lot of concentration and a fair amount of sacrifice. You've got to really want to do it and be committed to it and be able to do it.

                --interview with Nancy Mills for the Edmonton Journal, 2010

Wishing this consummate actor many happy returns of the day and many challenging roles to come. 

[notjustamaninahat]

Jeremy Northam + Edwardian Era

Q. Are those costumes uncomfortable?

A. Yes, terribly uncomfortable, especially when they dig into your double chin. I dread it. I had to go to some costume fittings recently . . . and my heart sank when the collarless shirts and the studs came out. 

--”Man of Style,” InStyle Magazine, Oct. 1999

Henslowe Fisk in Dean Spanley (2008), Sir Robert Morton in The Winslow Boy (1999), Bertrand Russell in The Man Who Knew Infinity (2016), and Prince Amerigo in The Golden Bowl (2000).

[notjustamaninahat]

Because of the parts I've played–Mr Knightley in Emma, Ivor Novello in Gosford Park–people probably think I'm a toff, a public schoolboy and a Conservative voter. None of which I am.   

   --Jeremy Northam, “This Much I Know,” The Observer, February 2012

Jeremy and eight of his “toffs”: Sir Robert Chiltern (An Ideal Husband), Anthony Eden (The Crown), Mr Knightley (Emma), Bertrand Russell (The Man Who Knew Infinity), Ivor Novello (Gosford Park), Prince Amerigo (The Golden Bowl), Mr Wigram (Enigma), and Sir Robert Morton (The Winslow Boy).

[notjustamaninahat]

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling. All the great novels, all the great films, all the great dramas are fictions that actually tell us the truth about us or about human nature or about human situations without being tied into the minutia of documentary events. Otherwise we might as well just make documentaries.

Jeremy Northam, in an interview about Enigma with Emily Blunt (no, not that Emily Blunt) for her blog, 2002. 

[notjustamaninahat]

Kelly Ripa: They really made you look like [Dean Martin]. . . Looking at you here you look nothing like him. Jeremy Northam: Well there was a bit of face pulling going on. We didn't have enough time, or money, for prosthetics. I mean, there are things one could have done, build up the brows, done something else with the nose. . . .I got obsessed with his hands. He had huge boxer's hands, which he mashed up as a young man so all his knuckles were broken. And I don't have hands like that. So we tried to make the cuffs a little tighter on the shirts and the jackets [sleeves] a little bit shorter.

Jeremy Northam, on Live with Regis and Kelly, November 2002, describing how he “became” Dean Martin for the movie Martin and Lewis. 

[notjustamaninahat]

I get very low when the skylarks disappear. But when they return it makes my heart lift.

Jeremy Northam, “This Much I Know,” The Observer, 2012.

Photo credit: Everything Is Permuted

[notjustamaninahat]

“I recently saw a very dear old girlfriend. She looked down and said, ‘Oh, my God! You've got a toe ring.’ I said, ‘What's wrong with that?’ She said, ‘Well, you're drawing attention to something that's not very nice.’ I said, ‘Oh, what's that?’ She said, ‘Your toes!’" --Jeremy Northam, InStyle Magazine, 10-1999