Toby Jones's Quotes

I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other.

I studied Hitchcock a little bit at University and knew the famous story about the Birds - that he'd tortured Tippi for a day using real birds. I had no idea that it was a five-day onslaught and that it was the tip of an iceberg that carried on through to another film.

I think it will be, as always, interesting to compare different portrayals of Hitchcock. I'm very honored that I'm playing the same part as Anthony Hopkins.

I was a fan of Hitchcock, but more importantly than that, he is such an inscrutable man, and a very carefully inscrutable man. He apparently was blank-faced with a calm and controlled presence. I was immediately anxious and thought, 'How am I going to get behind that?'

I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.

I've got to tell you, I've played real characters before and people always bring up this word 'impersonation,' and I'm never entirely sure what it means.

It's hard to imagine anyone interested in film not being a fan of Alfred Hitchcock because he's such a key influence on the entire history of cinema - it's hard to escape his shadow.

It's Toby Jones playing Alfred Hitchcock, not Alfred Hitchcock. We all felt that his silhouette was crucial, so his nose and lips were crucial as well. We had to build it out a bit to get the silhouette. But, with my nose being so small within the proportion of my face, the first nose was too big. I felt like a nose on parade.

One key element to Hitchcock is the drooping jowl. That was crucial because his silhouette is crucial. There is something about his silhouette that became his brand.

The prosthetics were interesting because the artist was so good that they could just put a Hitchcock mask on me, but you don't want to do that. You're an actor playing Hitchcock, so it's about how much of that you're going to do.

The script for 'Infamous' was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It's a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good... I remember thinking, 'Oh, this script is too good. They'll never give it to me.'

The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.

There are things that I would avoid, so I have the choice to say no, when I feel I'm repeating myself too much. But then there could be a reason to do that with a good director. So I think actors have to have a loose philosophy.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.

There's not a huge pile of scripts at home. It's what happens to be on the table at that moment with your availability. And then you have no control over when these things come out.

There's something in the rhythm and roll of it that is connected to the way Hitchcock thinks and moves. Then there is everything he ingested - the cigar smoking and drinking that's imprinted on his voice.

They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

When I told people I was going to be doing the movie and the voice of Dobby, they were kind of awestruck, the people who knew about Harry Potter. I felt rather guilty that I didn't really understand the scale of the job I was about to take on. Now, I am well aware of what I'm doing, and actually, it feels a very serious acting responsibility.

When working abroad you work pretty hard, but with time off, this is the greatest job in the world. You drive. You explore Memphis, or wherever you've landed, or go and see Dr John, or the Californian landscape. And, yes, I've had a few good meals.

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction.

All of these red carpet events may seem natural for you journalists, but it doesn't feel natural for actors.

I didn't sound anything like Capote at the screen test. It was more like Bob Dylan. In his early years. With the flu.

I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.