Top 100 Coogan Quotes
#1. I sat down to take a break from writing a book and wrote a spec feature that would end up being the movie 'Lies & Alibis' with Steve Coogan.
Noah Hawley
#2. Steve Coogan picks up enough to lecture an interviewer: This is a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about. Later it's claimed that Tristram Shandy was No. 8 on the Observer's list of the greatest novels, which cheers everyone until they discover the list was chronological.
Roger Ebert
#3. For one year, I was Keith Mitchell Coogan on my headshots. The next year, I was just Keith Coogan. And I have gone by that ever since, maybe 1984 or 1985. That is my mother's maiden name, and it was out of reverence for my grandfather.
Keith Coogan
#4. Steve Coogan does something for me. He is so naughty, but I quite fancy him.
Billie Piper
#6. If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.
Steve Coogan
#7. There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.
Steve Coogan
#8. I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.
Steve Coogan
#9. I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.
Steve Coogan
#10. I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.
Steve Coogan
#11. John Mitchel's famous declaration that God sent the blight but the English created the Famine.
Tim Pat Coogan
#12. I enjoy comedy but it can become wearisome.
Steve Coogan
#13. When I play myself, I want to be a slightly better person. It just agrees. Everything I play about myself is kind of true, but it's amplified. We all edit, don't we? If you're self-aware, you stop yourself - you know how to behave properly.
Steve Coogan
#14. Got my fungal foot powder? Ah, it's a lifesaver, you know. I'd effectively be disabled if it weren't for these.
Steve Coogan
#15. If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
Steve Coogan
#16. That's what gives people hope - that you can still love someone from afar and you can still have those feelings across an ocean.
Steve Coogan
#17. No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.
Steve Coogan
#18. I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.
Steve Coogan
#19. I don't like new bands. I don't want to be one of those pathetic old men in their forties who knows exactly what 18-year-olds are into.
Steve Coogan
#20. Big comedy is good, I like things that are big, but good comedy has to be truthful I think and has to reflect some sort of reality.
Steve Coogan
#21. I have never wanted to be famous, as such - fame is a by-product.
Steve Coogan
#22. I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.
Steve Coogan
#23. Redmond Howard, a politically aware witness to the Rising and a critic of the rebels, wrote in its aftermath: 'There never was, I believe, an Irish crime -- if crime it can be called -- which had not its roots in an English folly.
Tim Pat Coogan
#24. I knew lots of Irish ladies in my life who would say daft things and then would just say something incredibly truthful in a very simple way with simple language - a few well chosen words that would take an intellectual five minutes to express. I like that.
Steve Coogan
#25. All those people who go around saying Life begins at forty, they're notable by their absence. The nerve.
Steve Coogan
#28. A woman wearing a revealing dress will always be sexier than a naked woman.
Steve Coogan
#29. If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.
Steve Coogan
#30. That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.
Keith Coogan
#31. I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.
Steve Coogan
#32. Hacking into a victim of crime's phone is a sort of poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have.
Steve Coogan
#33. I think there's as much profundity and wisdom in Shakespeare, more so in fact, than those in the Bible.
Steve Coogan
#34. I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.
Steve Coogan
#35. Guide dogs for the blind. It's cruel really, isn't it? Getting a dog to lead a man round all day. Not fair on either of them.
Steve Coogan
#36. It is not true that sex degrades women ... if it is any good.
Steve Coogan
#37. The Church at its best is about empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the dispossessed and not putting a price on everything and not being about the bottom line and not worshipping the market or everything that is material.
Steve Coogan
#38. I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.
Steve Coogan
#39. Most of all I don't want to be bored. That's why I'd rather do something that has some sort of ambition, that risks failing, rather than make safer, more comfortable choices.
Steve Coogan
#40. Even great people are always slightly disappointing, which is generally what makes them interesting.
Steve Coogan
#41. I don't want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don't feel the need to do that.
Steve Coogan
#42. I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.
Steve Coogan
#43. I'm getting older , so I'm quieting down a bit.
Steve Coogan
#44. There's something quite joyful about doing comedy which doesn't really need much analysis. I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.
Steve Coogan
#45. There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent.
Steve Coogan
#46. If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Steve Coogan
#47. Convoy? Michael, you're hanging around with a man who uses a collective term for a single vehicle.
Steve Coogan
#48. I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.
Steve Coogan
#49. I like the British public. There is something in this country called tall poppy syndrome. You're good but you're not that good, pal, OK? The natural state of our nation is slightly miserable, and probably the healthier for it. In America you don't get a key down the side of your Bentley ...
Steve Coogan
#50. I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.
Steve Coogan
#51. If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater.
Steve Coogan
#52. My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.
Steve Coogan
#53. The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It's a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.
Steve Coogan
#54. There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.
Steve Coogan
#55. A lot of people can be very scared about making themselves vulnerable and appearing uncool. I don't really give a damn; as long as it's funny, I'll do it [make fun of myself].
Steve Coogan
#56. The Bible, undoubtedly, is a mixed bag. I don't see myself coming back to the Church. I do like the tradition. If you come from a strong culture, you can decide what you agree with and what you don't agree with. If you're given a blank canvas, it's almost harder in life.
Steve Coogan
#57. It's arguably the best newspaper in the world.
Steve Coogan
#58. I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.
Steve Coogan
#59. If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.
Steve Coogan
#60. If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused.
Steve Coogan
#61. When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.
Steve Coogan
#62. I would advise anyone seriously interested in acting to study, train, and work as much as possible ... You will know soon enough if it's the right avenue for you.
Keith Coogan
#63. I'm not Mother Teresa. But I'm not Frank Bough, either. I am getting older and a bit more sensible. I'm not going to be popping up in dungeons every six months. If you catch me preaching fidelity while I am shagging chickens then throw the book at me. Otherwise, leave me alone.
Steve Coogan
#64. At first, we lived in very, very small places ... with my mom cleaning houses and scrounging up just enough to keep us in town with a working car. She introduced me to my first agent, and I started with stand-in work, then eventually commercials and television guest-shots.
Keith Coogan
#65. I happen to have a public profile. Ditto newspaper editors. It's a result of what I do, not an end.
Steve Coogan
#66. We're all a bit of a dick. It's the human condition. Nothing to be afraid of.
Steve Coogan
#67. A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh,
but passion makes the bones rot.
Michael D. Coogan
#68. As soon as I see period costume, I turn off. It's like hearing drama on Radio 4.
Steve Coogan
#69. The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.
Steve Coogan
#70. I cuss like a sailor; I smoked cigarettes for many years but quit and have never looked back; also, I ride a motorcycle ... in Los Angeles ... so there ya go.
Keith Coogan
#71. You really have got lots of issues! Yeah, of 'What Car Magazine'!
Steve Coogan
#72. When you tour you become more intimate with your audience. It's like I need reassurance that they like me or at least find me relevant. And that I can still do it.
Steve Coogan
#73. Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister.
Steve Coogan
#74. Depending on which side of the fence you're on, you could argue that the sexual liberation of the late '60s, led to women being emancipated in some ways. That they found a voice during that time, with feminism. It's complicated.
Steve Coogan
#75. I'm 47, my girlfriend's 33; she's 14 years younger than me, back of the net!
Steve Coogan
#76. The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.
Steve Coogan
#77. Actually, bizarrely, in America, I get more appreciation from the odd, unusual stuff I've done, almost because I'm not, if you like, famous in America as I am in England.
Steve Coogan
#78. Even if I screw up in my personal life, as long as I'm not destroying myself, I just think, "Okay, I screwed up." I'm not Mother Theresa.
Steve Coogan
#80. In my mind God made Adam and Eve, he didn't make Adam and Steve.
Steve Coogan
#81. I am lucky to be in a profession that is not age dependent.
Steve Coogan
#82. The irony is, of course, that many of the values that I was raised with, that I think are very important, that I hold dear, are the result of a religious faith.
Steve Coogan
#83. I'm an entertainer. I don't go round saying I'm a paragon of virtue, so that is clearly not in the public interest.
Steve Coogan
#84. Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.
Steve Coogan
#85. It may seem like improv because it flows quite naturally, and a little bit of leeway for improvisation is good, but you have to be judicious with it. So it's good, but sometimes people deify it. You can't improvise your way out of a paper hat.
Steve Coogan
#86. If you got the balls to follow something through, you can end up being the coolest, smartest guy in the room, because you've literally put your ass on the line.
Steve Coogan
#87. I don't go to premieres, unless I'm contractually bound to.
Steve Coogan
#88. Yeah, all drama teachers are very effusive, very demonstrative, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical.
Steve Coogan
#89. Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.
Steve Coogan
#90. I started out as Keith Mitchell. I had done probably about ten years of television work under that name. Then my grandfather passed away in 1984. I wanted to honor him and his name.
Keith Coogan
#91. IT'S OUR IMPERFECTIONS THAT MAKE US VULNERABLE, MAKE US INTERESTING. HOW CAN I MAKE MYSELF A BIT OF AN ASSHOLE AND STILL HAVE HUMANITY ABOUT IT?
Steve Coogan
#92. To me, I like and understand ritual and I think it is important. Things that we do that give us comfort are important. Like Christmas, I like to go into a church and hear the carols sung. There's a comfort of actually going inside of a church, I find them serene. They're unchanging.
Steve Coogan
#93. I used to do stuff at college. I could do voices. I could make some people laugh. I wasn't the class clown, but I knew I had this skill.
Steve Coogan
#94. When it comes to morality, I'd rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.
Steve Coogan
#95. People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting.
Steve Coogan
#96. If you do something very successful, you will then be defined by it.
Steve Coogan
#97. I love Sherlock Holmes. I've got all his books, leather-bound. What I thought was great about Sherlock Holmes was that not only was he a supersleuth, he was also a hard worker. Not only did he go out and solve the crimes, he came home and wrote it all down. Fantastic. That's why I admire him.
Steve Coogan
#98. What I don't like is dance music or hip hop or any of that sort of thing.
Steve Coogan
#99. Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.
Steve Coogan
#100. I don't think I'm kind of universally known. I think in the indie world I'm probably better known than in some mainstream Hollywood terms.
Steve Coogan
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