Simon McBurney
Simon McBurney
Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate, Friends with Money, The Golden Compass, The Duchess, Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth25 August 1957
art cloud creating function layer might perhaps pierce
So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?' Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality - so the function of art is to make things - to show: 'Hang on, this is real.'
easier except knows movies nobody work
As an actor, it's much easier for me to get work in the movies because nobody knows who I am except for the work that I've done in another movie. I really enjoy that.
closer constantly
The brain constantly assures us, reassures us, that we are in control. But the closer you look, the more questions you have about it.
change individual mind music physical
The way the mind decodes music is an individual mystery. But the physical circumstances can change the way you listen.
arthur artistic deeply embedded met psyche
When I met Miller, for me it wasn't a question of wanting to meet him because it was Arthur Miller; it was a kind of astonishment that I could meet someone who was so deeply embedded in the psyche of my artistic development.
adolescent crushed death failed failure feeling incredibly miller moved people portrayal school subject system
When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves.
exists mind reality theater
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience.
lives quite sequence
Our lives are a sequence of things. When we're alive, they're continuing, just as my words now are an improvisation. So the idea of 30 years is actually quite nebulous. It's impossible to encapsulate it. All you can do is go: 'what next?'
delicious delivered fact imagination milk seem
I remember the fact that milk was delivered every day by a milkman. In summer, my mother would make what now seem in my middle-aged imagination the most delicious iced milkshakes.
hard
In Japan, sometimes it's hard to know what you are looking at.
attracted deal opens
I'm naturally attracted to something I don't understand because when you try to deal with something you don't understand, it opens a door into another world.
million time
In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo.
audience consciousness longer project unified until
In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.
entertainment everybody honourable indeed tradition
In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else.