Art & Creativity Quote by Paul Scofield

A sly little act of preemptive self-sabotage, this line works because it turns taste - that most status-soaked of human claims - into a punchline at the speaker's expense. Scofield isn’t confessing a guilty pleasure so much as refusing the entire social ritual of ranking, defending, and curating. By adding "in fairness", he adopts the tone of a careful witness, as if he owes the court a balancing fact: whatever he’s about to say about music, don’t trust him too much. It’s modesty staged as credibility.

"Reputedly" is the quiet dagger. He’s not even owning the charge; he’s reporting it, dryly, as hearsay. That choice keeps his dignity intact while still granting the listener the pleasure of thinking they’ve caught him being humble. It’s a classic actor’s move: controlling the room by appearing to yield control. The phrase also hints at an offstage Scofield who is allergic to celebrity certainty. As an actor celebrated for gravitas and intellectual rigor, he’s puncturing the expectation that he must also possess refined opinions in adjacent cultural arenas.

The subtext is social: taste in music operates like a passport in certain circles, especially among the educated arts world that often surrounds theatre. Scofield’s joke declines that border check. It signals, with warmth rather than aggression, that he’d rather be judged on work than on playlists - and that he knows how quickly seriousness turns into pretension.