Response when asked what classics he would like to do.

"Yeah, I want to do...I'd like to play MacBeth.  I'm a little old for Romeo."
 

"I've been interested in him [Shakespeare] since I was about 16 and doing Romeo And Juliet in my English classes. I love him. Where did he come from? I got completely engrossed in acting Shakespeare - in the eloquence, in the low and high humour, in the agonies and the ecstasies. King Lear is my favourite."

 YOUR REPUTATION AS AN ACTOR IS, YOU'RE ALL WORK, NO SOCIALIZING.

"That's been my nature for the past year and a half. [Pause] I do go out once in a while. It's not like I'm a monk. It's not like people would say, "Before, he was footloose and fancy-free, and then he became a monk." [In a Shakespearean voice] "I'll wipe away all trivial, fond ( Read more... )

“There are certain lines [in Shakespeare's sonnets] that are just great, like, ‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste’. Y’know?”

"I love it. I love the soliloquies. I read Shakespeare and I love to speak it. I love acting Shakespeare, and it was Don John! And what was it he says?" Reeves begins to reenact his role in the film under his breath, before coming out with his favored line, at which point he comes to life: "'In this, though I may not be a flattering honest man ( Read more... )

Do you take creature comforts with you when you’re shooting far from home - a dog, a certain type of food to keep you sustained?

Reeves: I don’t, no. But the one thing that’s been following me, speaking of Shakespeare, is a well-thumbed, worn collection of the sonnets, and that’s been going along with me for a while. Once in a while I’ll read ( Read more... )

 Can I ask you a two-part question? If someone was to write a play about your life what kind of play would you like it to be: a comedy, a drama or a science fiction?  'And the second thing is: how old would you say your heart is?

"My heart! Hmmm. Well, why don't we do The Divine Comedy and I'd say that I have a young old heart."

What's the one thing about you that most people don't know?
"I recite Shakespeare to calm myself down. I love Shakespeare. When I was 18, I did Romeo and Juliet onstage. It's very relaxing when you read it out loud. Try it. I really like Hamlet. I'm doing it onstage soon and I'm learning my lines, right now."

What's his idea of heaven?

"Acting heaven would be Hamlet," he states, without hesitation. "With Lear in the afternoon."

On Hamlet

"The issues of death, grieving. The, uh, issue of... [Pause] He speaks fairly often about the nature of living. And the nature of conduct. I mean, one of his soliloquies begins, "To be or not to be. . .," which, um, some people ask themselves. And about the choices that we make and the way that we make them. [Sigh] I guess I could put ( Read more... )