I don’t much enjoy Back and Forth. I mean, I think it has its own particular qualities, but I think it’s inferior to any of the half-hour ones we did. – Rowan Atkinson
The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance… has helped to determine your path through life. – Rowan Atkinson
But I always feel that whatever I do, I could do better. I suppose it is perfectionism. – Rowan Atkinson
Nope, I don’t enjoy work generally. Not because I’m lazy; it’s just all so stressful and worrying. – Rowan Atkinson
I mean I can do it when I’m very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing. – Rowan Atkinson
I feel as though the camera is almost a kind of voyeur in Mr. Bean’s life, and you just watch this bizarre man going about his life in the way that he wants to. – Rowan Atkinson
And what’s interesting about him as a comic character is that the custard pie hardly ever ends up on his face. – Rowan Atkinson
People think because I can make them laugh on the stage, I’ll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn’t the case at all. I am essentially a rather quiet, dull person who just happens to be a performer. – Rowan Atkinson
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. – Rowan Atkinson
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
No, no, I was only funny on stage, really. I, I, think I was funny as a person toward my classmates when I was very young. You know, when I was a child, up to about the age of 12. – Rowan Atkinson
I think the character does tend to suit an episodic thing, because what’s fun about him is that he doesn’t care about anyone else, and it’s very difficult for a main character – a lead character – in a movie to not care about anybody else. – Rowan Atkinson
Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that’s important to me. – Rowan Atkinson
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
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
I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time. – Rowan Atkinson
And, we put a lot more value, or at least I personally put a lot more value, on the creative values and creative challenges of something than the commercial necessities. – Rowan Atkinson
We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it’s faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming. – Rowan Atkinson
Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression. – Rowan Atkinson
Mr. Bean is essentially a child trapped in the body of a man. All cultures identify with children in a similar way, so he has this bizarre global outreach. – Rowan Atkinson
