John Rhys-Davies: This is a unique age. We don't want to be judgmental...

I think 'The Lost World' could've been a successful movie except for the fact that it pre-dated the good special effects and computer graphics.

John Rhys-Davies

successful special thinking

In the film world, we can all be heroes. In the real world, where heroism can cost you your life or the life of the ones you love, people aren't so willing to make those sacrifices. When they do, they are set apart from the rest of us.

John Rhys-Davies

sacrifice real hero

Id love to spend more time on the Isle of Man. I love the anonymity of putting on a boiler suit and going down to buy parts for the compressor. And Norman Wisdoms a neighbour; I salute him occasionally.

John Rhys-Davies

more-time suits men

I like heroes, and would like to be a hero myself. I suppose we all want that.

John Rhys-Davies

hero want

Many do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.

John Rhys-Davies

real joy civilization

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

John Rhys-Davies

sacrifice queens kings

Sometimes you learn more from films that aren't terribly successful and, indeed, sometimes you learn more from real disasters than you do from the ones that succeed.

John Rhys-Davies

succeed real successful

Hollywood is a far safer place to work than working abroad, because of the skill level, and because of the safety considerations that experience and unionization have created.

John Rhys-Davies

hollywood safety skills

To be an actor for 30-odd years trying to become recognized, and to end up playing a full prosthetic and a character 3 foot 9′, or something like that, is... well, it just shows that you can get actors to do anything.

John Rhys-Davies

feet character years

The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

John Rhys-Davies

scripts scene stories

Actually, I'm addicted to science fiction. Let me make my diction clear - I love sci-fi.

John Rhys-Davies

diction sci-fi fiction

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

John Rhys-Davies

fit actors careers

I enjoy acting. It's not that I begin to think I'm getting better. I now fully know that I've made no improvement whatsoever since I was 20. I can live with it.

John Rhys-Davies

get-better acting thinking

Villains are a lot of fun. My villains have a lot of tongue-in-cheek. They are sometimes conscious of and a little bit gleeful of their villainy.

John Rhys-Davies

tongue littles fun

It's an age where politicians don't actually say what they believe, they are afraid of being judged as being partisan. Heaven forbid that we should criticize people who, after all, share a different value system. 'But it's all relevant. It's all equally relative. We're all the same. And God and the devil, they're the same, aren't they, really? Right and wrong? It's really just two faces of the same coin,'.

John Rhys-Davies

entertainment

They are afraid of being judged as being partisan. Heaven forbid that we should criticize people who, after all, share a different value system. 'But it's all relevant. It's all equally relative. We're all the same. And God and the devil, they're the same, aren't they, really? Right and wrong? It's really just two faces of the same coin,' we have lost our moral compass completely, and, unless we find it, we're going to lose our civilization. I think we're going to lose Western European Christian civilization, anyway.

John Rhys-Davies

entertainment

It's not hard to get people to take a premise and accept it.

John Rhys-Davies

get accept hard people

Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they're the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I've met a few real villains in my time, and they weren't the least bit sympathetic.

John Rhys-Davies

dreams villain quality time

I love a good safari.

John Rhys-Davies

i-love good love

Unkindness is quite a major sin.

John Rhys-Davies

quite major unkindness sin

This is a unique age. We don't want to be judgmental, every other age that has come before us has believed exactly the opposite. I mean, T.S. Eliot referred to 'the common pursuit of true judgment.' Yes. That's what it's about. Getting our judgments right.