Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Vampires have always held a very seductive kind of lore and have always been some variety of attractive, whether it's attractiveness that's born of just the physical attributes that they have - this kind of ethereal beauty or translucent pallor - or whether it is more to do with the way they carry themselves.
The level of backlash [for the True Detective] was kind of fascinating and not fully shocking because I know what the world of the internet is and how it's a platform to project their greatest anger and frustrations. But it's also a place where people can wax lyrical and be effusive in their glowing fondness of something.
You consciously look after yourself, whatever that may be to you, whether it's going out for a few drinks and a bit of dinner, or just hitting the couch and watching TV, or going to the gym or yoga class. Just being aware that there's a potential for you to be in it and respecting wherever you find yourself is good enough.
I think that is what you want to do as a cinemagoer - to experience something fully. Some things don't let you experience them fully. It may be your own preordained prejudice where you can't experience them fully. But when you come out of the cinema having felt, thought, and experienced your way through two hours, that is a really cool thing.
On "[Total] Recall" also [sets were extraordinary], but this was next-level. They built two or three blocks of midtown Manhattan in 1926 and it was inhabited with 400 extras and 24 Model Ts and a train system and all that kind of nonsense. It was madness. You would walk into shops and they would have the goods from that period, it was just huge.
At the end of the day, it's all one version of telling a story. I treated this as if it was a two million dollar independent film. I did a lot more physical work than I'd probably have to do for a two million dollar independent film with four months of training and stuff. But as far as the character's psychology or emotional life goes, I treat it just the same.
One of the great things about the film being so unusual and provocative is the filmmaker to me doesn't seem to have a definite opinion on the rights or wrongs or the immorality of behaviors and systems, he just presents a set of very unusual circumstances and asked the audience to partake in the judging of what feels right or wrong or what feels natural and unnatural.
I do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally.
I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me.
I'll wait to see what the film [The Lobster] is, but it's set in a contemporary world, in America, there are hospitals and diners, parks, things that we will recognize and experienced ourselves but yet there's this similar kind of uneasiness through all the interactions and all the things that take place. It was unnerving reading the script. I kind of felt nauseous after reading it.
Quite often on a movie like Total Recall you have this training period of two or three months where, like on the first 'Underworld' I was doing gymnastics and trampolining and all this stuff which I don't do in the movie necessarily, but mentally it helps. You come home and you go: 'Well, I've done all that. I must be an action star now!' So it helps you focus a little bit and gets you fit.
I was well aware of that when I heard they were remaking 'Total Recall.' My first reaction was: 'Ewww, really okay?' And the director said you should really look at it, the script is good. I had already done a remake. I had just finished 'Fright Night.' When I heard about that being remade, I had a whole ego thing... remake?. 'That is so uncool! I loved the original, I can't possibly do that.
Beauty is undefinable in language. It's something that you see when you see it, or you feel when you feel it, or you hear when you hear it. It usually encompasses all five of the senses. It can't exist without it being a somehow sensorial experience. But, I don't think it's quantifiable. Nothing is really quantifiable. Nothing is certain in love and friendship. We all try to understand these things.
Most of actor's work is done at home, in your hotel room, in the wee hours of the morning thinking and reading and feeling, walking around and listening to music. It really just because an internal exercise, whatever skills. It's great if you have to learn something new for a gig and designing a character physically is always fun but it does become an internal exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.
Audiences will see what they want to see. Some will come out, hopefully enjoying two hours of action. Some people will find themselves gravitating towards the emotional dilemma that the characters find themselves in. Other people will see that there is some layer of subversions to the storytelling aspect of poking a finger of judgment at certain governments to the idea of foreign invasion, others maybe false pretenses.
I'm enjoying [my career]. If anything I'm aware that the pressure of the first, I suppose, six or seven years I was in America - I mean that energy of having such a rapid and ascending celebrity - it's not there anymore. It's the end of that chapter and now I'm just enjoying the work probably more than I ever have and yet I'm simultaneously less attached to it I think, which is kind of a strange state of grace to be in.
An actor said recently that, unless you're a parent, you shouldn't play a parent in a film. I don't know who said it, but I disagree. I understand that maybe there are aspects that you don't understand, or maybe this actor or actress had a really strong recent experience with having their first or second or third born child. I don't know. As a dad, I get that. I get that there is no love like it. But, at the same time, love is love.
It as an argument between the world of emotion versus the world of the intellect. It's the idea that you can suppress a person's mind and a person's experiences, mentally, psychologically and intellectually, but you can't completely quiet them to the point of dormancy and the emotionally life a person. You still have the heart and what the heart remembers and what the heart experiences. And even that isn't important that that comes across.
I mean you can go wherever you want with it really. No matter what story you're telling you're always representing some reality. You are always representing human beings, their fears, their shortcomings, their braveries, their doubts, their loves, their abilities, their brilliance and those things inevitably lead to bigger political systems, foreign policy and crime and religion. It's an action film. We are not taking a stance about big government.
Sometimes I have experienced at the start of a film you're very excited and enthusiastic and you've done all your preparation internally and externally and you start the film and it's all go... Then your attention goes somewhere else. Your energy goes into telling the story, so you don't have the same amount of energy to be objective, and that's okay because sometimes you become a subject of the story and you're inside it so much that you don't need to keep on looking on the outside.
Myself and Yorgos Lanthimos, we spoke a little bit and I was at a certain body weight that I was closer to making a statement or defining the character physically by losing weight. There was no justification for him to be emaciated, but I thought, say I was 165, I thought what if I went down to 155 and have him rail-thin? And Yorgos was like, "Well, if he's very thin I think maybe it will speak to some kind of psychological trouble that we want to stay away from," and I was like, "F - -, you're right."
You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character.
Yorgos Lanthimos said, "What about if he's a bit soft?" And I said, "Yeah, I think you're right." He just comfort-eats a little bit too much. He's just asleep in his own life and has let himself go. And the mustache, I don't know if it was him or I suggested it. But I remember my sister was watching me eat and she was like, "God, does he have to be fat?" And in retrospect I couldn't think of David being any other way because it affected the way I moved. It really did. It slowed me down in a way that I felt was conducive to kind of tapping into the spirit of the character.
I must say, I am thrilled with my fan base. For some reason some of them are quite young, so they are quite frightened. I remember when I did 'Click' and I'd see Adam Sandler's fan base. He's the guy that people feel that he's their best friend, so he's walking down the street and people sort of high five him and want to tell him a joke or invite him to come home and have a sandwich with them. Mine are not like that. Mine tend to go: 'Argh,' and look horrified. They shake and take a picture from a really long way away. I do feel I've got quite good, respectful ones though.