Comedy Quotes

In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

When I do comedy, I lose all inhibition and introspection. I no longer care.

I've always been part of comedy. One of the things about our family was that if we were reasonably funny with each other, particularly my two brothers and myself, when my father was upset with something you'd want to make sure in some way you made him laugh. Because when he didn't laugh, you were in trouble!

The thing is, comedy's gone in a weird direction. People are really into ironic comedy and fakeness and cleverness.

The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.

In Canadian comedy, you'll almost never see guns. If you bring a gun into a scene, it's like, 'Whoa! Wow, how are we going to deal with that!' Guns in an American comedy are a given. Violence in America is used in a much more cavalier way.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.

People who do comedy are always underrated because they make it look so easy.

With comedy, you really want to work things out beforehand.

I had a flair for comedy and could give a sustained performance.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to do.

The Internet is a great place to find unconventional comedy that you can't find anywhere else.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

Creative comedy is like growing geraniums in a mine field.

Comedy covers such a wide range of different styles that I'm not really qualified to talk on all of them any more than anyone else is.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

My favorite work is The Full Monty because I got an Oscar for it. But it was really hard work at the time. Sometimes comedy is not a bundle of laughs to actually do.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.

You can't study comedy; it's within you. It's a personality. My humor is an attitude.

You're entering dangerous land when you start theorising about comedy.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

I used to write bits and pieces of comedy material for various comics that were at the Windmill... as well as my film job, I was under contract, I was allowed to do that and everything.

I like to play different types roles, but I'd like to do a comedy next.

I was really more interested in dramatic work, but I thought, 'Well, I guess I could do comedy.'

My comedy does not come from a place of deep cynicism, and I tend to play characters who are naive in some way.

An actor who is good at comedy can also be very good at drama, but not necessarily vice versa.