Quote

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

Rowan Atkinson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rowan Atkinson
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 6
Actor
Comedian
Electrical Engineer
Film Actor
Film Producer
Manufacturer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Mr Bean
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson
Religion
Spent
Aghast
Christian
Notion
Imply
Part
Atheism
Substantial
Made
Figures
Ridicule
Career
Background
Effects
Backgrounds
Careers
Illegal
Religious
Effect
Lampoon

More quotes by Rowan Atkinson

Image
I've no desire to hang around with a bunch of upper-class delinquents, do twenty minutes' work and then spend the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne and having dozens of moist, pink, highly experienced French peasant girls galloping up and down my - hang on.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear, where you flash back and flash forward in ways that certainly keeps you on your toes as the audience. There's not much of that courage with the storytelling in our Maigret film.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I can be reasonably funny and light-hearted when I'm in the company of good friends, but I'm not a jokesmith. I tend to be quite serious.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
The path of my life is strewn with cow pats from the devil's own satanic herd!
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Your services might be as useful as a barbershop on the steps of a guillotine.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That's a platform we use, or a priest. You know, anywhere you lecture and pontificate to people.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Certainly in the second film [Maigret's Dead Man], which is quite a more unpleasant and darker story, it's quite different in tone and feel.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
Lord, thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
At the moment, I'm certainly not thinking 'never again', but neither am I thinking 'I can't wait to play that part again'. I'm somewhere in between.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
I find his films about as funny as getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it.
Rowan Atkinson
Image
When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.
Rowan Atkinson