If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

Steve Coogan

Work Respect Art

If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

You Too Thing

I'm a huge fan of Jack Lemmon, he was someone who managed to tread that line between comedy and tragedy and sometimes give very big performances, but they were never over-demonstrative and they were never not based on a kind of real truthful human being.

Steve Coogan

Truth Time Age

Comedy is unique in the sense that laughter is a palpable noise that everyone makes.

Steve Coogan

Very Unique UN

If you do something very successful, you will then be defined by it.

Steve Coogan

Success You Will

I used to do stuff at college. I could do voices. I could make some people laugh. I wasn't the class clown, but I knew I had this skill.

Steve Coogan

Voices Voice Used

When you see a crowd of people jumping up and down at a pop concert, all gloriously in the moment, I don't think you'll ever see a comedian there. They'll all be standing at the sides, looking at how it all fits together.

Steve Coogan

Mom Men You

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

Steve Coogan

Virtue T Son

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy. Making people laugh one moment and the next making them feel really uncomfortable.

Steve Coogan

Mom Men Age

People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting.

Steve Coogan

Vague Tin Thing

The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches.

Steve Coogan

You World Why

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

Steve Coogan

Funny You Write

As soon as I see period costume, I turn off. It's like hearing drama on Radio 4.

Steve Coogan

Turn T Soon

I don't go to premieres, unless I'm contractually bound to.

Steve Coogan

Unless UN T

I have never wanted to be famous, as such - fame is a by-product.

Steve Coogan

Famous Wanted Want

Actors say they do their own stunts for the integrity of the film but I did them because they looked like a lot of fun.

Steve Coogan

Use Us UN

There's something quite joyful about doing comedy which doesn't really need much analysis. I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.

Steve Coogan

Art Which Us

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

Steve Coogan

Great Funny Your

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

Steve Coogan

Work Success Change

But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

Steve Coogan

Funny Wit UN

If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused.

Steve Coogan

War Worldview World

Actually, bizarrely, in America, I get more appreciation from the odd, unusual stuff I've done, almost because I'm not, if you like, famous in America as I am in England.

Steve Coogan

When I see friends from school I think they've all grown old and I've stayed the same.

Steve Coogan

I don't think I'm kind of universally known. I think in the indie world I'm probably better known than in some mainstream Hollywood terms.

Steve Coogan

I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

Steve Coogan

There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.

Steve Coogan

When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.

Steve Coogan

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

Steve Coogan

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy.

Steve Coogan

Most of all I don't want to be bored. That's why I'd rather do something that has some sort of ambition, that risks failing, rather than make safer, more comfortable choices.

Steve Coogan

Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister.

Steve Coogan

I find impressionists slightly annoying, really.

Steve Coogan

What I don't like is dance music or hip hop or any of that sort of thing.

Steve Coogan

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence.

Steve Coogan

London audiences are tricky, too. They don't laugh as much as the Northern audiences because, and I hate to say this, they are a bit cleverer normally, and they are picking up on all the little details and listening more carefully.

Steve Coogan

Even great people are always slightly disappointing, which is generally what makes them interesting.

Steve Coogan

When you tour you become more intimate with your audience. It's like I need reassurance that they like me or at least find me relevant. And that I can still do it.

Steve Coogan

The great thing is that the funny side of getting old is fuel for my comedy.

Steve Coogan

I happen to have a public profile. Ditto newspaper editors. It's a result of what I do, not an end.

Steve Coogan

I want my work to be judged, not me.

Steve Coogan

The tabloids operate in an amoral parallel universe where the bottom line is selling newspapers.

Steve Coogan

Hacking into a victim of crime's phone is a sort of poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have.

Steve Coogan

I'm an entertainer. I don't go round saying I'm a paragon of virtue, so that is clearly not in the public interest.

Steve Coogan

I try to not make safe choices, but I also like to do stuff which is interesting and is sort of exciting in some way and accessible.

Steve Coogan

Big comedy is good, I like things that are big, but good comedy has to be truthful I think and has to reflect some sort of reality.

Steve Coogan

I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.

Steve Coogan

I don't think there's anything outside what comedy can address.

Steve Coogan

Yeah, all drama teachers are very effusive, very demonstrative, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical.

Steve Coogan

I think it's always funny when you see kids do Shakespeare.

Steve Coogan

My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.

Steve Coogan

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

Steve Coogan