Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't play an attitude; don't play a guy who's negative. Play a guy who's not trying to sell anybody on anything, he's just saying how it is and if you want to come by what he's thinking, you're welcome. If you do not, then do not.
Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets. I didn't want anybody's name on my backside. I personally don't like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone's likeness all over it.
I love Los Angeles, and it's been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who's living them? You don't play characters that are celebrities - you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank's blocked.
There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, 'Oh, you're playing yourself.' I guess it's kind of a compliment. Or people say, 'Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.' The work is to make it look effortless. That's the hard part.
I don't dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it's gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin' White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It's connected to where you are today.
I’m a fan of the word selfish. Self. Ish. When I say I have gotten a lot more self-ish, I mean I am less concerned with what people think of me. I’m not worried about how I’m perceived. Selfish has always gotten a bad rap. You should do for you.
The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don't meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it's essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you're going to be an actor.
So to any of us, whatever those things are: whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward to, and whoever it is we're chasin'. To that I say: Amen. To that I say: Alright, alright, alright. To that I say: Just keep livin'. Thank you.
Having children has helped me become a better actor because they remind you to play make believe. It's the ease and naturalness of their beings. They just play and it's completely real for them at the time. As an actor, if we do it well, we make you believe.
When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, 'Sexiest Man Alive,' I'm honestly going, 'Thank you. Right on.' For me, it's never canceled out anything, it's never made me go, 'Does this make me less talented of an actor?'
I had a fan who had a fictional relationship with me. She wrote letters to me and then wrote return letters to herself (from me). In her mind, we were married and had two children. Her parents finally uncovered this delusional life she was living and she got help.
Any artist, the work you do, if it's a painting or if it's a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else's life. That's what's fun about sharing art.
I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I'm for anything life-affirmative. I'm for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who's different.
I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.
I had a van that I customized so I could basically live out of that while I traveled and then I graduated to an Airstream. I've got three Airstreams now and they're all customized different ways. The good thing about those is there's not enough square footage to blow all your money.
I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods - that's where I'm really happy.
I love it. It's silly to say that it is a world of false and stupid people. Sure there are witches and swindlers, but you can meet there many creative, talented and generous persons too. Hollywood is a pleasant place, when you are hip to the game and you enjoy it for what it is really.
Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there's gonna come a time that you're gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.
I think it's because we're looking for the meaning. Where is the meaning? We have mindless jobs, we take frantic vacations, deficit finance trips to the mall to buy more things that we think are going to fill these holes in our lives. Is it any wonder that we've lost our sense of direction?
I think the discipline comes with turning that cellphone and Blackberry off and unplugging completely. You do that and you go through some withdrawals in the beginning. You start thinking, 'Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?' You forget that we were doing just fine with the payphone.
Whether I'm running on the beach without my shirt or whether I'm going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner - I don't choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.
One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven't seen him in five years. Where have you been? So, it's a special event, right? Well, if you want to go see a movie that I'm in, it still may be a special event for you, but, you don't feel like you don't know where I've been.
One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven’t seen him in five years. Where have you been? So, it’s a special event, right? Well, if you want to go see a movie that I’m in, it still may be a special event for you, but, you don’t feel like you don’t know where I’ve been.
If happiness is what you’re after, then you are going to be let down frequently and be unhappy much of your time. Joy, though, is something else. It’s not a choice, not a response to some result, it is a constant. Joy is “the feeling we have from doing what we are fashioned to do,” no matter the outcome.
I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.
Some things, you just like what you like and you stick to it. Other things, you like what you like, but the things that come with celebrity or success comes more options. There's was nine, all of the sudden there's ninety-nine things to say "yes" to, which you didn't have the option to say "yes" to yesterday.
I'm one of the most adaptable guys I know in as much as travelling is my favourite thing to do in life. With every place I go, I try to stay there long enough to do it justice, long enough so that I can at least imagine what it would be like to live there. Once I imagine that, then it's OK for me to return home.
Each of the films, whether it’s Magic Mike or Dallas Buyers Club, was a challenge for me. I had to dig deeper. Also, my decision to shake things up came after my first child was born. I had taken nearly two years off and I thought that I would enjoy my time as a dad and wait until something interesting came along.
There's a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What's the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it's exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That's really cool. That's the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.
I do believe in God, but I think it's very healthy for a believer to spend time in the pragmatism of agnosticism, and I think God appreciates agnostics trying to make a science of it and going, "I will not believe any further than that." I enjoy that kind of engineering mind. In no way did it ever feel blasphemous to me as a man of faith.
First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.'
If I'm doing something I do like to take it to the limit. I've got a high ceiling. A wide threshold for seeing what those boundaries are for myself. I'm very resilient inside. I find things that I like and do and boy, I do like to stick to them. I'm not necessarily a guy who gets addicted to more of certain things, but if I find something I like to do, I like to stick to it.
The hardest thing was going through different stages of weight loss. At the beginning, it was easy to take off the weight with exercise and eating less but then you reach a point where 90 per cent of the weight loss is achieved purely through reducing your calorie intake. My goal was to lose four pounds per week. That worked well for the first few months but then things got tricky.
In romantic comedies there's a certain ceiling and a floor that you can't necessarily love as hard, or hate as hard, or have as much pain, because you sink the shop of the romantic comedy. But in a certain drama, like some of the ones I've been doing, the ceiling and the floor was my own. And in many ways, that was a higher ceiling and a lower floor, so that was more of a band-with for those emotions.
Directors like William Friedkin (Killer Joe), Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike) and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) got in touch with me and wanted me to be part of their films. That was a whole new chapter for me. I didn’t chase any of those films and it made me think that I was right to take a chance, say no to the kind of thing I had grown tired of doing, and wait until something good came around. And it did.
You know who it is? It's me in 10 years. So I turned 25. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, 'So, are you a hero?' And I was like, 'not even close. No, no, no.' She said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because my hero's me at 35.' So you see every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my hero's always 10 years away. I'm never gonna be my hero. I'm not gonna attain that. I know I'm not, and that's just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.
What I always look for is someone that really knew how to lean up against a bar, get a drink, sit on a barstool. When people are in bars they're relaxed. No real right angles - it's slow moves, it's slow conversations. You can tell a loud joke, but everyone's very relaxed. I never would pick somebody nervous or twitchy. If I found guys with beards, I'd ask them, don't trim the edges, don't go in and manicure yourself up. I always look for people that look like they're comfortable in their own skin, that wouldn't feel like it was the first time they were ever in a bar.