There are parts that you can do them all your life, and no one knows you're even acting, and there are other parts which somehow - I think they say they 'pop' - people notice that you're in and you become an actor from the movies and people take you in a whole different way. Whether or not I can keep that ball rolling is another matter.

Alexander Siddig

Categorized in : Thinking People Acting

I wish everybody was just ethnically ambiguous. It would make life a lot easier.

Alexander Siddig

ambiguous easier wish

There's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles.

Alexander Siddig

roles west enough

You know, I find people with great honesty, bodily, physical honesty, who sit just the way they like to sit, and walk the way they like to walk, and don't come into a room all pumped up, I find them elegant.

Alexander Siddig

honesty people way

Bin Laden actually is the most European or westernized of all the Arab leaders. He's the one who is the most polished ironically. He's smart and handsome and rich... you know, he's quite the eligible guy. Well trained by the CIA. He's a very dangerous man indeed and he now has this franchise called Al Qaeda, which rivals Starbucks in its ubiquity.

Alexander Siddig

ubiquity smart men

For me, it's painful to make a movie. It's not my normal rhythm.

Alexander Siddig

rhythm normal painful

I love sci-fi, computer games. I love any escapes. Give me them all.

Alexander Siddig

computer games giving

Something most people don't know about me is that I never grew up.

Alexander Siddig

grew grew-up people

I think the Arab world has no personality cult situation going on that they have in much of the Western world, South America included. They are a culture of words and religion, and you won't see manycsa charismatic people on Al Jazeera, except for the ones who are now learned presenters. You see Arab leaders getting on TV - which was very hard for me working out how to do the part, since Arab leaders are looking somnambulant, staring into their microphone, almost as if someone's got a hand up their back.

Alexander Siddig

hands america thinking

I think if you're good and you can persuade people you're going to be able to do that role and ultimately the audience buys it, then it doesn't matter whether you were really a chimpanzee in disguise! You've done it.

Alexander Siddig

roles people thinking

The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation.

Alexander Siddig

relaxation littles needs

When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.

Alexander Siddig

political war people

I'm one of the luckiest Arab actors on the planet, because I've done, I think, two of the finest Arab roles that have been out in mainstream cinema for a very long time.

Alexander Siddig

two long thinking

You really expose yourself when you try and go to up the volume and up the size of your performance.

Alexander Siddig

size volume trying

I'm not necessarily a good actor, but once people start saying you are, you are. And I know that that's a truism, and there's obviously nothing important in that particular statement, but it's really about the fact that people create you as a good actor.

Alexander Siddig

actors important people

You're not actually being a good actor all the time. But people refer to me as a good actor because they read it someplace, not because they've made up their own mind. So I'm very lucky!

Alexander Siddig

lucky mind people

…I know that, from an actor’s point of view, professionally you don’t want to be on a show like that for too long, unless you are one of the top leads who originated the show, because your schedule gets kind of messed up.

Alexander Siddig

latest-headlines

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Alexander Siddig

latest-headlines

Maybe they thought, ‘Well, let’s prove that we’re going to stray from the books. We’re going to do something else, and he will be our first example of that.’ So maybe that could have been the case. Or maybe I just screwed up. Maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Alexander Siddig

latest-headlines

Everybody is paranoid about some leak on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube… I think the secrecy is kind of understandable, but also there is an element of hype about it that makes it… the more secretive it is, the more special it is. And certainly ‘Game of Thrones’ plays that. They misinform the crowd and they give them tidbits to send them in wrong directions.

Alexander Siddig

latest-headlines

I am almost positive that those four episodes were leaked by HBO themselves.

Alexander Siddig

latest-headlines