Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Especially for me, growing up in such a small town in the middle of nowhere, the desire to be away was incredible. I wanted to see new lands, meet new people from the city, and meet people that were in much less fortunate situations than I was, so that I could be more appreciative of my present. At least I had food on the table.
It’s literally true, as Shakespeare said--all the world’s a stage. It wasn’t that way when I first got into the movies in 1924, but it is now. That’s why I find Hollywood newer and more exciting every day. Whatever you hear it’s still a place where a kid from Montana can jump on a horse, ride that-a-way, and keep right on going.
What happens when you're naked is that people get that you're really just a human being. There are parts of it that are pretty appalling, and there are parts that are okay. That's what it looks like. If you can embrace and accept what people look like in the altogether, it's not so difficult to accept them with their clothes on.
It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game.
The most important thing to having a long career, as an actor, is diversity and being able to play different types of characters in different types of movies. I want to keep acting, all my life. In order to do that, I think it is important to go and do the bigger tentpole box office movies, and then also do more character roles.
I've done a couple of movies for scale, and it's the only way to get a lot of these independent movies made. The actors negotiate deals where they're given just enough money to live on during the filming, but then they participate in the back-end. If the movie suddenly makes a gazillion dollars, we'll participate in that profit.
I'd always told people that I would have liked to pursue some sort of professional fight career. I don't know if I'm quite right for it, since I'm extremely prone to injury. I've been boxing for a couple years, and I've messed around with some Jiu-Jitsu, and I've always felt that there's such a passion in a real fighter's heart.
I structure the scripts and work on them on films and work on scenes with writers and but I haven't written a script myself, I really respect what they do and I'm fortunate I get to work with people that I really enjoy working with and we all kind of spitball and work together on these things, but I haven't written a script yet.
I feel good about the fact that I finally found something I love. I never lived in one place for very long - that's the way my whole life has been. I was always packing and moving around, staying in Canada, Kentucky, Jersey, St. Louis - it all helped because I was always learning new accents, experiencing different environments.
As a director, it became important to hear that specific role read by that specific actor, and you hear the chemistry, or you don't hear the chemistry. So I'm not so bothered by the audition process anymore; in fact, I use it. It's a time for the actor to actually get to the know the director and the producers a little bit, too.
I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.
People still want to escape, but today's escape is different. People now want to know that there are people out there who have more problems and are a train-wreck! This is why I think it's difficult for sitcoms these days, because people are not going to believe, joke, beat, beat, joke, because there ain't nothing to laugh about.
It is quite common to meet people that live a few kilometers away from Mexico and that have never been there. We need to revive on many levels an illustrious desire to get to know the world, to learn another language, to understand and create empathy with people that live a few kilometers away from us. It's never late to do this.
Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.
Isn’t it time you gave yourself a healthy dose of self-love? The fact is, you deserve it. You are a magnificent, radiant being. You are divine. And you are awesome. The sooner you start embracing that and treating yourself accordingly, the sooner your life will begin to unfold with compassion, purpose, ease, health, and vitality.
You can't have a director say, "Just be you"; you have to have an aim. It's like when you throw darts, you have to know where the bullseye is. You can't just say, "No no no no no, drop the darts. Just stand. We're going to film you." You have to get there indirectly. You have to have me doing something, and then you can get "me."
Right from my childhood, I have believed in a Supreme Power. I don't know whether it has form, or it is formless. I am a high school dropout. How come life has given me so much? It's not my intelligence, it's not my abilities. This understanding makes me scared even in success. I don't own my success. Neither do I own my failure.
We had a great dramatics department in school, so I did a lot of plays and theatre there. Later, when I was the captain of our student's ward, I figured out that if you find something you really love to do, you don't have to work for the rest of your life! You can just have fun and still excel in it because you enjoy what you do.
Seeing, say, 'My Left Foot,' and 'The Last of the Mohicans.' How is that the same person? Or people like Johnny Depp, who can play Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands. I am so interested in the transformation, in not knowing anything about them and watching somebody create a character. I'm not really interested in personalities.
Youth is a lifestyle; it's not a blessing from God. If we treat our bodies as if they are not the most precious things we possess, then obviously we will show wear and tear. We're like a good pair of jeans. If we take care of them, they'll remain classic forever, but if we batter and abuse them they'll look like tattered old rags.
If you represent a fantasy for the people who actually go to the cinema, they grab that and go with it; therefore, for the rest of their lives, they actually identify you with a certain thinking - a certain philosophy. There are many actors who want to pursue that same thought in real life as well, and that's perfectly acceptable.
Yeah, I mean, climbing's always been a massive hobby of mine up until, kind of, recent times when I've had family, but no, it's been a driving passion in my life and, uh, I've always wanted to climb the Matterhorn. It was the mountain that, sort of, inspired me to climb, as a youngster. So, it was great to be able to get to do it.
I think whenever you have a common goal with someone, you're going to bond. It's really hard to get two people together and be like, 'Hey guys, why don't you just bond!' But if you say, 'Listen, I need you guys to build this house, or I need you to do this or I need you to make this movie,' you'll get to work and you'll get close.
The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.
We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. We know from the French, their wonderfully neurotic presidents, that our hands are sort of tied. The Italians - I don't know where it stops. No nation can claim "We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are." Because it's going on everywhere.
I've gotten involved in producing now, so the kinds of things that are more my own choice are more possible in that field because I don't have to be castable. I can actually get involved in getting stories off the ground that no one would ask me to be in because I'm the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong nationality, or whatever.
When you're playing a good character, you have an idea that you're playing the hero and the good guy. Actually, I think you're more stymied playing the good guy than you are the bad guy. As the bad guy, you have no inhibitions. Nothing stops you from doing what it is you feel you have to do. You do it because it's what's required.
A very small proportion of the country's black money is in the movie industry. Because we are written about, public attention is focused on us. Do you think there is no black money in other businesses? With the exception of government servants and others who have tax deducted at source, there are tax evaders in every walk of life.
Blade Runner is one of my favorite films. But, so many thing influenced me that aren't science fiction because they were just good drama. I grew up watching a lot of French cinema. I was in love with The English Patient, and movies that are very romantic in nature and have a positive message. That's a large part of my fingerprint.
There was a time in our past when one could walk down any street and be surrounded by harmonious buildings. Such a street wasn't perfect, it wasn't necessarily even pretty, but it was alive. The old buildings smiled, while our new buildings are faceless. The old buildings sang, while the buildings of our age have no music in them.
'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.
The headmistress was a very well-respected theater teacher. She taught me what stage left and stage right were, what a director was, and what all these things meant, which was something I had no concept of. She sent me off to drama school, at age 18, and I stayed there for three years. Before I knew it, I was working on a TV show.
Honestly, I think it's dumb luck that I'm able to kind of get away doing different types of films in different genres. There's always a tendency to kind of stick with what works, or stick with one particular kind of brand or movie. But so far I've been getting away with it, so I'm going to continue to do that for as long as I can.
In theatre, once you've got the character and you've got things together, you can relax into it. Film has a different feel - you don't get that through line of not stopping. Theatre is like a snowball gathering momentum and getting bigger, whereas in film, it's a bit stop and start - but you do tend to adjust to that quite easily.
The joy and happiness it gives you or the emotions you go through when you hold your child in your arms for the first time are indescribable! I really thought that there was going be this moment when a ray of light from heaven would come pouring in, background music would start playing with angels singing, but none of that happens!
It's nice to know that if you've worked really hard at something, it gets recognised with a tick in the success column - however you define that, be it making a bunch of dough, which the actors never see much of, or whether it's a piece that's enlightening or stays with the audience maybe six, seven or even eight or 10 years later.
There is something about the live performance of an orchestra that makes it very different to a film. With a film, you can rewrite it in a way with the material you have, and in rehearsals, you're really trying out different things. In an orchestra, you can't do that. They separate as soon as the performance factor comes into play.
It's bizarre: sometimes I go through periods where I really want to put a song up online, and sometimes I'm sort of busy with other things... It's very much a hobby, that kind of thing. I sort of post it more for maybe my mom's benefit, and suddenly she says, 'It's got 50,000 views.' And I think maybe I should've put it as private.
It's certainly anyone's prerogative to say, 'I liked something more when it was this' or blah blah. But there's a kind of laziness as a consumer of entertainment, I think, to wish that something was repeating itself and doing the same thing. But to each their own, and I do it all the time. I've dropped television shows as a viewer.
The more and more I step back and look at myself from my own personal perspective - which is what I try to do, to get outside of myself and look at it - there aren't too many things that I don't think I am. I like to party 'n' bullshit, entertain, be the center of attention, and pour champagne on naked girls. I like to do that too.
If you're thinking clearly and are content about where your life is - to where you can just think about the present, think about the now - that's what you need to do to hit good golf shots. I know there are a lot of distractions, but when you're thinking clearly, you're more free. You've got to have that freedom on the golf course.
I have an enormous amount of respect for Nicole Kidman. She's just done so many great movies and she's been out there at the forefront of carrying films and being a movie star. On set, it really pays dividends because when you're performing with her, she knows exactly how to play it. You don't have to compensate for her in any way.
Don't get paparazzi following me everywhere. My life there is exactly the same as it would have been if I had not been in Harry Potter. So for me, Harry Potter isn't something that changed my life. It's just something I did that was a lot of fun, and I got to experience amazing things from. But my actual, personal life is the same.
You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl.
I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, "Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?" I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working.
Sometimes when you're making a film and something happens during a scene that you've just thought of, it can be missed if the wrong lens is on or if you're shooting in the wrong direction but this [performance capture] doesn't miss a thing. So, you might do something that's genius - very rarely, admittedly - but it doesn't miss it.
I enjoy going out by myself... always have, always will. I don't have security guards, and, for the most part, I enjoy meeting new people. I see myself as a regular guy who likes playing video games with his nieces and nephews and poker with his family. I don't have an art collection or take exotic vacations. I enjoy being at home.
My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.
it's a weird thing with acting and it happens to a lot of actors, not just myself - it's like you're giving off an I really need to be loved today vibe. My worst moment recently is I fell asleep on the tube in London on the Victoria line 8:30 in the morning and I woke up and there were about five people with iPhones taking pictures.
While green-screen work, find a way to stay true to whatever it is that it takes to act a scene out, and make sure that you use your imagination as best as you possibly can, still stay loose, and still allow yourself the liberty of doing what you need to do as an actor, and then work within the confines of what is actually possible.