Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

you go to the National with your parents and think: 'I'd love to be here.' And then suddenly you are. It's a dream come true.

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

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

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.

I have no problem with nudity. My friend Ewan and I are starkers in most of our films.

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.

On his role in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) - I told Anthony that if I play Dickie Greenleaf, I want to eat in the best restaurants and drink the best wines every night because he would.

{About working on Enemy at the Gates (2001)) Yeah, I got blown up, cut up...I remember actually, when I had to go the Ripley premiere which was happening at that time, I arrived with this huge gash in my head. Very cool, really.

(About his injury during Dickie's death scene in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)) Matt [Damon] broke my rib! But I think I strained his neck, we got a little bit carried away.

(about how he got the role of Gigolo Joe) Through one of those fantastical phone calls when your agent calls you and says 'Stephen Spielberg is on the phone, he wants to speak to you about his next film.' And once you've peeled yourself of the ceiling you go, *clears throat* Yeah, great.

(about the paparazzi) "I throw root vegetables at them.

Bosie [from the movie Wilde] was the first part I was ever offered, which I suppose is sort of an insult because he's just the nastiest bastard!

Well, I had to do a nude scene [in the play Indiscretions], and you're on stage naked but you get over it, you do whatever you have to do. But the first night, my character is just getting out of the bath, and the rest of the crew had poured in freezing cold water.

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' 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.

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.

The only film I ever made for money was something called Music From Another Room, which I really didn't like.

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 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.

There were two instances where the police were called for whatever reason to my old house and they sold the story, telling lies. The police were responding to phone calls that happened, but they were then coming out and creating an atmosphere, a drama, when actually nothing had happened; there were no charges pressed. But that's the High Court and then the police selling stories, so how are you going to live in a country and feel safe?

Face it, I didn't become famous until I took my clothes off - (People Magazine 3/26/01)

It's not ideal for me that they come out all one after the other in four or five months. I did them all because I found them very different different kinds of films, different kinds of parts. And I hope people recognize the variety rather than the onslaught. [On Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004), Alfie (2004), Closer (2004/I) and The Aviator (2004) coming out within 6 months of each other. He actually did them in the last two years.]

As a culture, the West has found itself in a strange, not battle of the genders, but battle in one's own gender. There's been so much equalizing that we've all kind of lost a little sense of who and what we're about, and a certain amount of definitions of who and what being a woman and being a man is about. It's almost like a murky middle ground that sometimes diffuses the definition and out of that has indeed spawned, in certain areas, misogynism.

I just want to say I am deeply ashamed and upset that I've hurt Sienna and the people most close to us.