Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I know if you talk faster and use more ten-dollar words than everyone around you, you convince half of them that they should shut up because you know what you're talking about.
Worrying is like praying for something you don't want to happen. I have such an overwhelming sense that if you're in the right state of heart, the next right thing appears to you.
You have to let go of the things that are darling to you. You have to take the focus off yourself and put it on the shape of the scene and the intention of what everyone else needs.
[Addiction's] not about placating the bad dog - it's about feeding the good dog. You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn't bring you up on charges.
I remember when people said, "Man, that's a powerful scene in the movie!" and I was like, "We just shot this thing before lunch, I don't know, he tears a log apart, I said some words".
With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it's going to translate easily.
Wing Chun teaches you what to concentrate on, whether you're here or out in the world dealing with problems. It's second nature for me now. I don't even get to the point where there's a problem.
People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living.
But I will agree that I think that things happen with people in relationships, that you might have been able to enjoy Morocco, say, if you weren't getting out of a bad marriage. You know what I mean?
I read the script for Wonder Boys, and I said that was almost perfect, it was so classy, cool and funny. It's a really specific thing. We stuck to it, it turned out good and a lot of people liked it.
I think paranoia goes from generation to generation. It's convenient to imagine that there's a few people controlling everything, that way it's manageable and small. But that's not life, life is messy.
I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done.
Sometimes you're not supposed to enjoy it [acting]. You're supposed to cooperate with misery and proceed anyway. But what I do enjoy is a sense of well-being and just participating in life and life's turns.
I've always felt that if you're not on your side, why should anyone else be. So I always encourage people to be confident, and sometime even a little falsely so, just so you can give yourself an opportunity.
I loved it, it's such fun. I like that people are seeing it and then talking about it. Like when I took my son and his friends to see Napoleon Dynamite last year, we spent the next six weeks trying to explain it.
Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid of total failure because I don't think that will happen. I'm not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It's being in the middle that scares me.
I grew up with a lot of people whose whole prime mover was dad rage. I never really had it - it always seemed so empty. It always seemed to be masking something else, which was really their own lack of initiative.
Everyone has a story, and the story changes, and the more I can root into the truth of things - it's so hard - I don't think anyone ever really puts it all together. But somewhere along the way it all became fused.
I was kind of like chasing my tail and trying to do the right thing, and was a little bit stupid. Or irresponsible, which is the same thing I guess. It's just been really busy and I had a lot of great opportunities.
I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself as a professional person and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results.
I think a hero is someone who, if abroad or traveling, they go to the GOOP website to see what shops to go to, what restaurants to eat at, what clothes to buy, and they do that not fearlessly but in spite of their fear.
I used to be so convinced that happiness was the goal, yet all those years I was chasing after it I was unhappy in the pursuit. Maybe the goal really should be a life that values honor, duty, good work, friends and family.
I thought that the grounded-ish nature of the first Iron Man and where I think the success of it was based was I think people got excited that this was a technologically possible occurrence; and didn't Obama order an Iron Man?
It's a very smart and heartfelt movie and that's why, I think, we're all drawn to it. We really showed up for this with this collective idea that it was really ambitious, but we felt we all really had something to gain from it.
It's become this really odd thing where even some of the folks who build the things that we wear for entertainment are contacted by DARPA-esque companies who are saying, "Yeah, we're really doing that, and we want to talk to you."
It's interesting when you're old enough to take a new, objective approach looking at your parents, frame them in a way where you are actually taking yourself out of the equation and just look at the things that are true about their life.
Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.
I think the goal is to make a well written scene seem like it's improvised and/or to come up with things that you find in the room that you couldn't have known until you get into the real situation, just try to improve things as you go along.
It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word. Anybody could come in and say, "You know, I'm just not cool with that." We'd be like, "Who's that?" "Oh, I was just cleaning the trailers." It was nuts.
I think I just never wanted to be the creepy guy where people say, 'Why do his leading ladies keep getting younger and younger, and why do they think he's so hot even though we know that the girl who's playing this part actually has a handsome boyfriend?'
I, personally, would be shocked if we went to the end of the tape now and I didn't have at least one... Look, even if I don't get one directly, eventually they're just going to have to give me one when I get old. So no matter how you slice it, I'm getting one.
In the marathon obstacle course of a career, it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do - because you've made so much damned money for the studio.
But I think Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang really got that thing where, if a movie reads really funny and then has some dramatic or violent or sinister stuff in it, you can't forget that primarily it has to be even funnier than you read it or that other stuff doesn't work.
I need a lot of support... Life is really hard, and I don't see some active benevolent force out there. I see it as basically a really cool survival game. You get on the right side of the tracks, and you now are actually working with what some people would call magic.
Im thinking of buying a monkey. Then I think, Why stop at one? I don't like being limited in that way. Therefore, I'm considering a platton of monkeys, so that people will look at me and see how mellow and well-adjusted I am compared to these monkeys throwing feces around.
Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.
I saw School of Rock, and I was like, why haven't I worked with Richard Linklater already? Then by the time I got him I was like, I'm really pissed off I feel like you owe me some retroactive swag. He gave me the 10-year anniversary "Dazed and Confused" T-shirt, which I still wear with relish.
If someone really takes a risk, it doesn't get dismissed. That's what happened when the Oscar was won posthumously by Heath Ledger, who did one of the definitive villain performances of all time. But it really has to be exceptional in defining everything we previously knew about the actress or the actor.
If I could eat whatever I wanted every day, I would have Domino's pizza with pasta carbonara inside every slice. And at night, I would have Neapolitan ice cream until I felt absolutely toxic. And then I would drift off telling myself, 'It's going to be O.K... It's going to be O.K. you're going to train in the morning.'
I don't like words coming out of a character's mouth that I adore because not only is he a little bit duplicitous but he's kind of practical in the way he thinks, and he thinks in terms of everyone's humanity and how quickly we can go against what we think we meant when we said it or what we believe or blah, blah, blah.
Growing up is something that you do your whole life. I want to always feel that I can be a kid if I want. Growing up has some negative connotations. Like, you're not supposed to roll around on the ground anymore. You're not supposed to make fun of yourself. You're not supposed to ride a bicycle. But I'm a Toys-R-Us kid.
I did Air America for two reasons: to be in a movie with Mel Gibson and to make a bunch of money. And then underneath there was the hope that in doing this formulaic thing I would be launched into a whole new realm of opportunity to do A-list movies. By the time we were done, the only positive thing was meeting Mel Gibson.
I like to be a little more difficult to nail down that that just inside myself, but when someone's motivations, even if they wind up falling in one side or the other of the debate, when they're personal and also when they're masked by something that only the audience knows is really their motivation, that to me is just what I call entertainment.
Im such a work in progress at the moment, its crazy, and life wants me on edge, I swear to you. But as long as I dont forget the past, Im cool. One must always be mindful, just like you might forget that old girlfriend who tried to slit your throat, but shes really still hot. If you remember the stitches more than you remember the pussy, youre going to be just fine.
It’s such a floating freak show. You get a bit older and you start to see what’s going on backstage in the collective psyche of this ridiculous industry. … Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I’m just another schmuck that they’re bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.
I have a really interesting political point of view, and its not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you cant go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You cant. I wouldnt wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.
Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it's something that you can't teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you're going to sink or swim. It's amazing how self-correcting and how clarifying a good, hard, shitty job can be. Because at the end of the day, any profession I've seen anybody in, when you peer behind the curtains of Oh, wouldn't that be a great job? Wow, what an amazing thing, a philanthropic endeavor! it really just comes down to It's a f**king grind.
I would say that among my many huge emotional miscalculations was my taking a film career for granted. It is the most awesome privilege to be able to use one's imagination and wit, physicality and musicality, conscious brain and unconscious instinct in the service of a work that has a chance to move and excite and amuse and delight people all over the world, including long after we're dead. What a noble calling! And I felt it was just there for me as a kind of given, some sort of inherited birthright-when in reality it's the most magnificent luxury.