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
years theatre pieces
I can't remember a single year of my life when I haven't made a piece of theatre.
mind theatre way
Infinity is a way to describe the incomprehensible to the human mind. In a way it notates a mystery. That kind of mystery exists in relationships. A lifetime is not enough to know someone else. It provides a brief glimpse.
math people brain
People expect the math to be simplified, but I want to surprise them right from the start. When the brain gets lost, it doesn't stop working. It tries to makes sense of things. It begins to speculate and guess, and that's when things open up. That's exciting.
powerful mean thinking
When you make something, if you are a painter or a writer, a degree, or a sculptor or whatever or a musician, a degree of energy is required to make it, and I'm not sure that it is always aggressive, but when you have a great deal of energy it can appear to be more aggressive than it is. In fact, I mean you can talk about a waterfall being aggressive, but in fact it is just a very powerful forward movement of energy, and although I think sometimes my engine house is a kind of anger.
theatre never-quit each-day
Yes it was chaos, working through chaos, you never quite knew what you were going to do each day, but you knew that you wanted to make something.
space imagination important
The other, the other aspect when I say I'm an actor is that as an actor you make this imaginative leap into being somebody else, that's to say the muscle of the imagination is as important as any other of the muscles in your body, and so it is something about this instinct in space and time which for me I associate with being an actor rather than a director.
theatre mystery
The more they uncover the more mystery appears to be there...
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.
amount cooked food gave looked mother realised smell
When my mother was dying, I cooked for her. One of the things I realised was that the smell and look of the food was key. I concentrated on how it looked on the plate. Even if the amount was small, it gave her a nourishment of a different kind.