Quotes by Fiona Shaw

About Fiona Shaw:

Fiona Mary Shaw is an Irish actress and theatre and opera director, known for her role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films and her role as Marnie Stonebrook in season four of the HBO series True Blood (2011). She has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, twice winning the Olivier Award for Best Actress; for various roles including Electra in 1990, and for Machinal in 1994. Her other stage work includes playing the title role in Medea, both in the West End in 2001 and on Broadway in 2002. She was awarded an Honorary CBE in 2001.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

There's something about the Irish that is remarkable.

Fiona Shaw

The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.

Fiona Shaw

I certainly had no intention of playing a man.

Fiona Shaw

I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity.

Fiona Shaw

I can hardly decide what plays I should be in.

Fiona Shaw

I enjoy making films, but my heart is in the stage. Every night you have to be on. There's no second take.

Fiona Shaw

My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.

Fiona Shaw

So I just play the character, I play the lines.

Fiona Shaw

Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while.

Fiona Shaw

I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.

Fiona Shaw

I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it.

Fiona Shaw

One moment cannot be the most important.

Fiona Shaw

My mother taught me to read.

Fiona Shaw

And by endlessly sanitizing our feelings, we actually feed a disgruntled nation.

Fiona Shaw

I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.

Fiona Shaw

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.

Fiona Shaw

There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.

Fiona Shaw

I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion.

Fiona Shaw

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

Fiona Shaw

Honestly, I get more recognized for 'Three Men and a Little Lady' than 'Harry Potter'.

Fiona Shaw

Author Bio

  • NameFiona Shaw
  • DescriptionActress, director
  • BornJuly 10, 1958
  • CountryIreland
  • ProfessionActor
  • AwardsLaurence Olivier Award; Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire