Quotes by Simon McBurney

About Simon McBurney:

Simon Montagu McBurney is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London.
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

I suppose I'm really interested in theatre that provides an intensity of experience on another level.

Simon McBurney

I find all food irresistible. I have friends who live in the mountains in France. One of them sells vegetables, and to walk through her garden when everything is bursting out - it's impossible not to eat something.

Simon McBurney

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.

Simon McBurney

I have always felt more at home in a culture that has nothing to do with the one I was born and brought up in.

Simon McBurney

'The Magic Flute,' I think, is fundamentally asking what is it to change people's consciousness.

Simon McBurney

The way the mind decodes music is an individual mystery. But the physical circumstances can change the way you listen.

Simon McBurney

My experience of my father's death was that it was still taboo; nobody would meet me after my father died because they didn't know what to say.

Simon McBurney

Everyone sees something different in 'Endgame': a biblical apocalypse, a portrait of painful co-dependency, a confession of guilt and dignity in the face of death, a night of baffling hopelessness, a meaningless babble. Each interpretation reveals an...

Simon McBurney

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 w...

Simon McBurney

I've had various people close to me die, and I don't necessarily find the idea of death purely depressing.

Simon McBurney

With the theatre, for God's sake, everything makes sense. You create a clear sequential reality for a specific audience at one particular time.

Simon McBurney

'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience.

Simon McBurney

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.

Simon McBurney

Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV.

Simon McBurney

Ultimately, theatre takes place in the minds of the audience: they all imagine the same thing at the same time.

Simon McBurney

In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo.

Simon McBurney

I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking of...

Simon McBurney

'The Master and Margarita' is deeply to do with the unconscious. It is a story about a man who writes a story in a time when he's not supposed to write that story: the story of Pontius Pilate.

Simon McBurney

As a child, acting just seemed like a natural extension of my love of play - and if you've forgotten how to play, you shouldn't be an actor.

Simon McBurney

I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.

Simon McBurney

My parents loved classical music. And my father adored Mozart. But for some reason, I always had a reaction against it.

Simon McBurney

Author Bio

  • NameSimon McBurney
  • DescriptionBritish actor, voice actor and director
  • AliasesSimon Montagu McBurney
  • BornAugust 25, 1957
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionActor
  • AwardsLaurence Olivier Award; Officer Of The Order Of The British Empire; Konrad Wolf Prize