Top 40 Ben Whishaw Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you.”

— Ben Whishaw

2. “I don’t have any ambition to make lots of money or win an Oscar or anything like that. It’s not about that for me.”

— Ben Whishaw

3. “I love films. I love music. I love poetry and stories. All of that I feel I sort of get very excited and fed by.”

— Ben Whishaw

4. “The criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws.”

— Ben Whishaw

5. “Filmmakers tell stories to explore human nature, which is always a flawed thing.”

— Ben Whishaw

6. “I wish that the arts were better supported, and you can’t say that enough times, but I also believe that whatever happens, artists will keep going.”

— Ben Whishaw

7. “I’d like to have a go at directing.”

— Ben Whishaw

8. “I think the sensation of being moved by a piece of art is something that is really good for a person’s soul.”

— Ben Whishaw

9. “I used to collect knick-knacks, like wizards, trolls and little buddhas, and arrange them like precious things on a shelf.”

— Ben Whishaw

10. “I think being very thin has had a lot to do with how I’ve been cast.”

— Ben Whishaw

11. “I can be shy, but I’m not really. I try to be better at overcoming these things people have said.”

— Ben Whishaw

12. “The most amazing thing is when you find yourself watching someone in the cafe or something doing something weird. It’s amazing what people do, isn’t it, when you just look at them, when you take the time to look.”

— Ben Whishaw

13. “As an actor, you have total rights to privacy and mystery, whatever your sexuality, whatever you do. I don’t see why that has to be something you discuss openly because you do something in the public eye. I have no understanding of why we turn actors into celebrities.”

— Ben Whishaw

14. “When I finished my A-levels, I assumed I’d be able to get work as an actor. But I couldn’t. I didn’t get an audition. Nothing. So I thought I’d better train and then the parts would come.”

— Ben Whishaw

15. “It’s fun to pretend you’re good at something you know you wouldn’t be good at in real life.”

— Ben Whishaw

16. “I’m really hopeless with technology – I don’t even have a computer.”

— Ben Whishaw

17. “Keats himself spoke about how Shakespeare was capable of erasing himself completely from the characters he had created. As an actor, that is what I’m trying to do.”

— Ben Whishaw

18. “I don’t think I am especially interested in celebrities, but I love talking about what is going on with people and why they do what they do.”

— Ben Whishaw

19. “My favorite Bond films are the really early ones, the first ones in fact, like ‘Dr. No’ and ‘From Russia with Love.’”

— Ben Whishaw

20. “I reckon domesticated cats have a pretty good life.”

— Ben Whishaw

21. “I was quite a shy child – not chronically, but I tended to blend into the background.”

— Ben Whishaw

22. “One of the things I find very difficult about theatre is the repetition – that something can slide away from your original intentions.”

— Ben Whishaw

23. “When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way – they make you look at the world in a different way.”

— Ben Whishaw

24. “The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you’re always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You’re always protected.”

— Ben Whishaw

25. “I love the characters I’ve had the opportunity to play.”

— Ben Whishaw

26. “I do get stopped on the street, although rarely. And they always have something lovely to say.”

— Ben Whishaw

27. “I don’t think anyone can walk through the world in a state of vulnerability all the time, can they?”

— Ben Whishaw

28. “In film, I find it very useful always to do some preparation before you start rehearsals or start shooting, because there’s so much that’s against you on a film set.”

— Ben Whishaw

29. “I’ve gone on workout regimes, but I seem to have a system that is very resistant to changing.”

— Ben Whishaw

30. “I think I have a degree of confidence, but I also have terrible insecurity, like anybody does.”

— Ben Whishaw

31. “I find it weird that people want to know about you.”

— Ben Whishaw

32. “Even today, England is a very repressed, repressive country, and there’s pressure to be kind of a certain way, so people do things that ultimately make them sad.”

— Ben Whishaw

33. “I find it really hard to say anything coherent or interesting about the work I do.”

— Ben Whishaw

34. “What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they’re great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.”

— Ben Whishaw

35. “I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I’m still fascinated by those things.”

— Ben Whishaw

36. “I’m not tortured and neurasthenic – I’m really not.”

— Ben Whishaw

37. “I am a typical Libran. I tend to see two sides of everything.”

— Ben Whishaw

38. “The thing about acting is that it’s fairly random. At the end of the day you take what drifts past you or what’s given to you.”

— Ben Whishaw

39. “I think that sometimes in theater, I don’t prepare much beyond going to the rehearsals.”

— Ben Whishaw

40. “I’ve been out to LA a couple of times but, over there, the Grenouille in me always comes to the surface. I feel completely terrified, totally flummoxed, like I don’t understand what the hell is going on. I’ve no desire at all to go back there.”

— Ben Whishaw

41. “We are so mired in the complexity of our reactions to other people that when you come across someone who is asocial, there is a simplicity that is refreshing.”

— Ben Whishaw