I'm kind of ashamed to be a celebrity. I don't understand wanting to read about other people's dirty laundry. I think celebrity is the biggest red herring society has ever pulled on itself.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

I'm not Tom Cruise. Very few British actors are. If you look at the body of work I've done it's pretty obvious I'm not going to make a 'Mission: Impossible.'

Face it, I didn't become famous until I took my clothes off.

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really.

London is my home... I know what's right and wrong here, and it's nice to have somewhere familiar to go back to.

I think it's a bigger risk following a part that plays up your looks than it is to try and carve out a career as an actor.

I've always thought Prince Charming in 'Cinderella' was the most boring role; I'd rather be the Wicked Witch.

I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.

I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents.

I honestly have no interest in celebrity whatsoever. If anything, I always cringe at it because it takes away from what I am, which is an actor who wants to be better and do better things.

You heard it from the heart, you saw it in their eyes. Then I got used to the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers and my feet. That for me was the essence of the battle.

I'm only wanted by directors for the image I give off, and it makes me angry. I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.

I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see.

If I have a look around at the moment I feel great relief because finally others are entering the limelight. Men like Robert Pattinson must now play the Adonis. For me it was always a restraint, a restriction.

In a way it was like washing your laundry in public and, yep, there you go, you've seen my underwear. And now I feel like there's nothing left, you've seen it all and I can get on.

The only film I ever made for money was something called 'Music From Another Room', which I really didn't like.

When you suddenly appear on the scene and you are the new face, everything centers on you. I experienced this in my mid-20s and I found it rather hard.

I suppose I'm intrigued with the bad traits of society, because I'm a part of society, and the bad traits pose the dangerous questions for our future.

Success, and even life itself, wouldn't be worth anything if I didn't have my wife and children by my side. They mean everything to me.

I would never know how to sell myself as a sex symbol. That's not how I'm programmed.

You can't spend your life apologizing.

My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing.

There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.

I don't want to do anything that I'm not passionate about.

We all have times when we go home at night and pull out our hair and feel misunderstood and lonely and like we're falling. I think the brain is such that there is always going to be something missing.

Personally speaking there's only so long you can go from film to film to film. There's an inspiration an actor gets from the stage.

I'm kind of ashamed to be a celebrity. I don't understand wanting to read about other people's dirty laundry. I think celebrity is the biggest red herring society has ever pulled on itself.

I sometimes shy away because I don't want to be too 'showy-offy' but the older I get I think, 'You have a handkerchief, put it in your pocket.'

I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general.

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

I don't think I'm a celebrity. A chimpanzee could have done what I did.

If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

The whole celebrity culture thing - I'm fascinated by, and repelled by, and yet I end up knowing about it.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.

You don't know when you're being watched. That's one of the weird things about celebrity. It's my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

Everyone wants immediate success, immediate celebrity, and that doesn't produce what used to be artists.

It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me.

My Brat Pack buddies and I didn't exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure.

I don't have any friends and don't have any intention of making any. People will stab you in the back, mistreat you, talk about me behind your back, steal from you. And they're not really your friends. They're only there because you're a celebrity or because they want to get something from you.

I don't mean that if you're a Christian, walking close to God, you will immediately gain celebrity. you may fail as an artist, because you may not have what the public want at that time, and you have to be prepared for that.

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

I feel about me like I'm one of the working people, just like you, and everybody else. I don't fit the part of a celebrity.

There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity you can't write.

I was 25 and the most popular celebrity in the world, with the possible exception of my friend Mary Pickford.

I think the more you expose yourself as a celebrity, the less interesting you are to watch in your work, because if you're putting yourself out there all the time, you're not holding anything back.