Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You spend your life training to be an actor, observing people's characteristics so that you can design characters around what you've seen.
Once you finish a film, it doesn't belong to you anymore - it belongs to the audience to interpret it the way they feel like interpreting.
Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous.
When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross.
Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you're changing, emotionally as well as physically?
I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair.
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
I've always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It's the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.
You have to feel confident. If you don't, then you're going to be hesitant and defensive, and there'll be a lot of things working against you.
I never sympathise with the accused unless there's a chance the accused is not guilty, but I certainly don't ever sympathise with the criminal.
My dad was fiscally conservative, and I was influenced by that. He didn't believe in spending more than you had because it gets you into trouble.
Directing is more like you're being a psychologist and you're kind of analyzing the situation and evaluating each person for their idiosyncrasies.
I am sort of anti-hunting. I don't put down what anyone wants to do, but it seems to me that killing a creature for fun is not a progressive idea.
A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn't mean they're going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.
Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn't done in life. They wish they hadn't kicked their dog when they were ten or something.
Great stories teach you something. That's one reason I haven't slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I'm learning something new.
As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I'd eventually run out of steam on that, and that would've been the end of it.
In the Bay Area, there was a resurgence of Dixieland jazz in the '40s - there was the Frisco Jazz Band, and Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band.
I never considered myself a cowboy, because I wasn`t. But I guess when I got into cowboy gear I looked enough like one to convince people that I was.
When you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one.
Pay attention to the work you want to do and everything'll work out fine. If you're in it for the ego, you might be successful but at a limited level.
When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?
As you get older you try to do things that please you more. You get a little more selfish. You start thinking I want to do things where I enjoy myself.
I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that's always nice. And if they don't like them, then too bad.
All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy and a lot of them, the majority of them, haven't won Oscars.A lot of people are crying, I guess.
I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.
You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best.
The fact is, violence is not only not a beautiful thing, but it's also very painful and not without consequences for the perpetrator as well as the victim.
I couldn't tell you exactly what I like about golf. Just when you think you've got it mastered it lets you know you haven't. I'm just crazy enough to do it.
My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I'd play 'em over and over.
That's why I don't rehearse a lot and why I shoot a lot immediately. I have ideas of where I'd like to take the character, but we both end up going together.
I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I'm not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.
Hitchcock used to believe that if there were three or four memorable scenes in a film that would be enough to drive it, but I don't know if that's true or not.
I don't write. I usually look for material by other people. Sometimes I change things or adapt things but I don't write from scratch. I wish I had that ability.
When I'm a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It's somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.
I have a small child. Being a parent takes a lot of time. People always ask me, "What movies have you watched lately?" I tell them, "Finding 'Nemo' ... 'Shrek'.
The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.
I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don't have a toy, they'll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.
My father had a couple of kids at the beginning of the Depression. There was not much employment. Not much welfare. People barely got by. People were tougher then.
Hillary Clinton has made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician. I'm sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician.
You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.
In recent times it just seems that women have been relegated to either romantic roles or fluff pieces. So the appeal, for me, is to make a picture about a real woman.
What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.
Let's put it this way: there wouldn't be much point in me attending a high-school reunion now because there wouldn't be anybody there. We'd struggle to raise a quorum.
There's no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don't try to adapt it, make it commercial.
My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself.
Am I aging? The pros and the cons? Well, you know a lot more, at least until the time you start forgetting it all. Actually, aging can be a fun process, to some degree.
You can't stop everything from happening. But we've gotten to a point where we're certainly trying. If a car doesn't have four hundred air bags in it, then it's no good.
I'm a firm believer in research, but I'm also a firm believer in utilizing the instincts that are within your soul or in your body or in your stomach, wherever they reside.
Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.