Simon Phillip Hugh Callow, CBE (born 15 June 1949) is an English actor, musician, writer, and theatre director. Read full biography of Simon Callow →
Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.
He spent hours and hours and hours practising these conjuring tricks. It's just such a curious thing.
I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.
I don't have any big regrets.
I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.
I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.
I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.
I'd like to direct more operas.
I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.
Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.
Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.
My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.
To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow, CBE (born 15 June 1949) is an English actor, musician, writer, and theatre director.