Actor Quotes

I don't really try to judge any character that I play, afterwards I figure it out, but while I'm working on the character, I have to find something in them to relate to.

I don't mean to be highfalutin about it, but I try to limit my visibility.

I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.

I don't have actor training myself.

I do all kinds of roles - nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho - and occasionally someone kind of normal. It's weird, when I lived in Austin I was always cast as pretty normal people. But when I moved to Los Angeles I was immediately branded a psycho.

Hitchhiking was such a pure form of existence. You'd wake up in the morning, and you'd have no idea what your day was going to be. And that's something I've never been able to shake. I loved that.

For me and for I'm sure any actor, each role is a different challenge to prepare for in a different way.

Even the small amount of infamy I have makes me uncomfortable - on a personal level and on a professional level.

Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.

Being a kid, as all kids do, you feel out of place or like kind of a freak. You wake up feeling like your head got put onto someone else's body that day.

As an actor, you don't often get a chance to know exactly the impact of what the audience is seeing, even though you can ask where the frame is. A move that feels tiny can be huge, and vice versa.

As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling, but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you're making a movie.

A lot of times, you just don't get the jobs you want to get.

My fear now is of cliche, of complacency, of not being able to feel authenticity in myself and those around me.

It's nice to sometimes get things out of life, rather than stealing from other artists. I'm trying to steal from the real people.

For the last 20 years of my life, I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects, so I'm attracted to good story, writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change.

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger. I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.

I'd be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I've made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not.

I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won't matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant.

I think that as soon as you think of yourself as a famous person or anything like that, you're objectifying yourself in some weird way.

I think having nature be a part of people's lives helps all of us see ourselves as part of something larger.

I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.

I kill flies, I eat meat, you know, whatever.

I have had so many bad auditions.

I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.

I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.

I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn't even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.