Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. Having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly.
I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters.
We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?
I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.
My parents divorced when I was young but I was brought up in two really loving households. I didn't have a contentious relationship with my mom or dad.
I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.
Please find out what you can do to make a difference. Take five minutes to educate yourself on an issue you didn't know about before. Then tell somebody else.
My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way.
Clint Eastwood expects you to know what you're doing. He's going to take two giant steps back and let you do it. I have such appreciation for that part of him.
I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.
Eventually stardom is going to go away from me. It goes away from everybody and all you have in the end is to be able to look back and like the choices you made.
Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing.
I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I'm just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.
I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.
I'm becoming far more interested in just functionality and making sure my body is as strong as it can be so I can swing my kids around and not worry about aches and pains.
The only way I can describe it-at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times? Everything is full; it's just full all the time.
I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.
I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.
I started 'The Rainmaker' in August 1996, and I've been working consistently ever since. It's not like I had some grand plan; I keep getting offered jobs so good I can't say no.
The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.
I was never that much a focus of interest that I became a 'thing' at an earlier point in my career. I'm aware of having become a 'thing' now, which doesn't give me a lot of pleasure.
It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.
I've passed on a lot of huge-money jobs. Money doesn't enter into the decision-making. If I do a big blockbuster, it's about how big an audience you'll get and where you can take them.
Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.
As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.
I've been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don't have much interest in you. I'm still married, still working, still happy.
I started really young, like 12 or 13, and then I started doing school plays. We had a really good drama department, so the kind of drama-geek stigma wasn't really there in my high school.
I think it's still hard for me to turn down work if it's really good because for so many years I was so desperate to get a job and couldn't and so it's kind of an anathema for me to turn down work.
Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.
If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.
I think what makes a good actor's director is somebody who understands what I'm doing and is respectful of it, but who also has a vision and is directing me toward their vision in a way that feels productive.
If you're just an actor you're reactive. You're saying, "Well, I hope Hollywood gives me a role, or gives me a chance at a role," whereas if you can generate your own content, then you can go where you want to go.
Clean water is only as far away as the nearest tap, and there are taps everywhere. There's a faucet everywhere. But the reality is, the water in our toilets is cleaner than the water that most people are drinking.
All parents are trying to balance. Look, I'm lucky in the sense that I can control my hours. I can choose my jobs, and not everybody has that choice. But I definitely, it's a family decision every time I take a job.
Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is "red alert." I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.
Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is 'red alert.' I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.
I think it's still hard for me to turn down work if it's really good because for so many years I was desperate to get a job and couldn't, so I think it's anathema for me to turn down work if I think it's really good.
There are people who just collect a bunch of footage and then edit it later. You definitely feel more protected when a director is moving on when you've actually felt something happen and you know they're watching intently.
The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It's not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans.
The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.
I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.
As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think 'actor' and see some easy money.
There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.
Clint Eastwood enables and allows things to happen. You walk on some sets and it's like walking into an emergency room. It's like, "Come on guys, we're just making a movie here." That tension runs into the performances and into the movie.
And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.
I can't think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values.
I love shooting, when the character is interesting and the script is interesting, but the research beforehand is really fun. The whole process makes me anxious and restless, and I have trouble sleeping, just trying to figure out the character.
I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn't double - it grows exponentially. Because then suddenly everybody wants to be in your bedroom. But I don't really give them anything.
It's usually the exact same three things which are, the Scripts, the Director and the Role those are the three things I look for and really any two of them, If I get two of them that's usually enough, but definitely those are the things I look for.
It's intuitive in terms of when I read a piece of material or I hear about a project. I'm a writer, so I've written movies. I've read at this point thousands and thousands and thousands of screenplays. So if something gets me, then I don't ignore that.