Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We've come a long way in our thinking, but also in our moral decay. I can't imagine Dr. King watching the 'Real Housewives' or 'Jersey Shore.'
All movies aren't fun; some are hard work. You try to do something and convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life kind of stuff.
I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say 'Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict.'
Jackson doesn't bother to read the scripts anymore. He just checks to make sure he has one loud scene where he gets to shout, then cashes the paycheck.
It's always interesting to play characters who are vulnerable and how you display that vulnerability and what it's going to mean to people who watch it.
I act the way I talk. It probably comes from starting out in Second City, improvisational theater. I can go from take to take. I'll ask for another take.
I don't get the great story line, action, mystery scripts; I get comedies. And relationship comedies are what I do. It's what attracted me to American Pie.
Sam [L.Jackson] never asks for another take because he knows what he's doing. He gives you what he thinks is the best take, and he does it on the first take.
You just let people do what they do and look at them and give them enough rope until they do what you thought they were going to do... which is screw you over.
I'm pretty focused on what I do. I think directing is a very specific talent, and I'm not real big on putting puzzles together, which is basically what a film is.
Everything that I've gone through informs me and my opinions in a way, I guess because I am a child of segregation. I lived through it. I lived in it. I was of it.
I look at myself as an audience member. I still love movies, and I still go and sit in the back of the big dark room with everybody else, and I want the same thrill.
I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Pam Grier. For the first time, I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'
I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics, pure and simple.
It's often hope, hopeful movie making. You're always looking for catchphrases. That's always funny, when you're looking for that future line. "Uh oh, future line. Okay."
I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.
There are tons of stories out there. I read a lot of scripts on a weekly basis. I'm looking for stories to tell and stories that I hope will be interesting to an audience.
I sit at home and read books. I watch movies. I watch television. I go and play golf. I don't go to nightclubs. I don't go out to dinner that often. I'm not a big party guy.
Just because people don't trust people doesn't mean [they] don't like them. There are lots of paranoid people in the world. You figure out their personalities and make them work.
People know about the Klan and the overt racism, but the killing of one's soul little by little, day after day, is a lot worse than someone coming in your house and lynching you.
People go to movies on Saturday to get away from the war in Iraq and taxes and election news and pedophiles online and just go and have some fun. I like doing movies that are fun.
When people want me to sign an autograph in a restaurant, and I'm eating. I don't even have to say no, I just kind of stop and look at them ... "Oh, okay. I'll ... I'll come back."
I'm a character actor and that's what I do. All the roles that I've had have been mainly support roles, because character actors don't usually get the lead in movies. It rarely happens.
I think the biggest challenges for franchises are keeping them fresh and exciting, and most times, you need a good bad guy to make that thing continually work, and sometimes they don't.
When I saw the script [of The Man], I saw the character and knew I could do the character. It's a relationship movie, which is also what I love to do. That's what attracts me to projects.
We [me and Eugene Levy] both try to play the reality of a moment and don't try to impose humor on something where it doesn't belong. Contrary to what other people seem to think sometimes.
I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.
I have a lot more energy than I used to have. I sleep better. I like the way I look in my clothes better. I don’t cramp as much. I exercise better. I think my circulation has gotten better.
I'm sure there are a lot of Italians who refer to themselves as goombahs and greaseballs and whatever. That's what people do. It gives them a sort of familiarity that other people don't have.
I'm not as angry as I used to be. But I can get in touch with that anger pretty quickly if I feel my space is being invaded or somebody is not treating me with the respect that I think I want.
I run into a lot of kids who are either on R&R, or on their way to Iraq. They all know who I am and are fans, but they're kids! I am yet to meet one that's over 23. Yet they're full-time warriors.
I never had one beer. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I kept drinking till all six beers were gone. You have to have that kind of understanding about yourself. I haven't had a drink now in 12 years.
The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform.
My dad was an absentee dad, so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter's life, and she deserved two parents, which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.
I walk the streets, take the train, it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh, I'm so famous I can't go places, because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.
I walk the streets, take the train, it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh, I'm so famous I can't go places, because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.'
I read, watch television, watch movies, hang out with family. I like my clothes and I have great cars, and I drive those. But for most people, it's like, "That's boring. You don't club? You don't party?"
Take a stand for what's right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you'll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool.
I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.
If you are a Jedi, just understand something: people are going to be chasing you. The Jedi Council of every city you enter is going to be chasing you. I've been accosted by the Jedi Council in Rio and everywhere else.
I just always knew that I lived in two worlds. There was the world of my house and community, but to make my way in that white world I had to modify the way I spoke and acted. I had to sometimes not make direct eye contact.
I approach my work the way an actor approaches their work. The only difference is that I do comedy, and my job is to make things funny. My style makes things sound like they're improvisational and happening right then and there.
Any changes that I made to my line, I asked if I could make them, which I do in every movie. So far everybody's been gracious enough to say yes. The only improvising I do is in the movies I do with Chris Guest, which is what we do.
I understand the rural south because I spent a lot of time in it when I was a kid and my grandfather’s brothers were farmers and I spent time on the farm when I was a kid with them walking through the fields and working and hanging out.
Sometimes one of my ways of choosing movies that I want to do is if it's the kind of movie I would have gone to see when I was a kid, and this is a movie I actually did go see, as a kid. And I think it will be exciting for audiences to see now.
Michelle Obama is Superwoman. What can't she do? That's why people love her. She can be on the Supreme Court and anywhere else she wants. She can be the president. She's history and she'll stay history because she is so amazingly smart and together.
I was desperate on Coming To America set - not to buy drugs or anything, but I had a person at home, a girlfriend who's telling you, "You're out the bills and food. You need this, you need that. And you either get it, or don't come back." That was me.
What I remember from [the first meeting with Samuel L. Jackson] was that he was a friendly, animated kind of guy. His screen image is a hard boiled intimidating kind of character. That's what I remembered thinking, 'Boy, this guy seems like a normal guy.'
Those are the rules. To improvise in a movie with other people, when they're following a script, everybody has to know what's going on. I think a line or two we might change. Certainly, I do. But I wouldn't call it improvising. I'd call it fudging the lines.
I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.