I couldn't imagine trying anything else besides acting. But I didn't know that to make it meant I'd be on a movie screen.
My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.
In, like, seventh or eighth grade every day after school, my friend Andrew and I would watch 'Wayne's World.' And I think it's a great example of a sketch effectively turned into a movie and a story that really works with a good journey. Not easily accomplished, but such a good journey.
We tried to make a movie that had sex and violence because we like sex and violence.
The amazing thing is that the more money it takes for a movie to get made, the more you feel like everybody wants you to fail.
I stuck around in Hollywood for too long. I was there a long time, and when I left, I was smart enough to realise that what I was leaving was not just the movie business. I wanted to get rid of the whole atmosphere.
People have come to me for my opinion since 'October Baby.' But, hey, look, I'm an actor who is very fortunate to be in a movie that's making wonderful noise, and hopefully helping parents and children to be a little closer. Leave me alone. I'm not talking about politics. I'm just trying to have a conversation with my own kids.
Yeah, 'Feed the Dog' is just a really fun, teenage movie with Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez and all these other great people. It's just so silly-funny, and my character's super-fun.
I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.
I actually don't pay a lot of attention to the movie 'industry'... I just do the work when I get it. I never considered anything I was in, or did, as a possible breakthrough for me. I have advised other actors not to expect anything. Expecting a 'breakthrough' is almost an automatic for sure 'let down' or heartbreak.
I've been very fortunate to be able to jump around. I just did this really wonderful film called Map of the World. That was a real, amazing, dramatic story. Then I did a movie called Company Men, a little comedy about the Bay of Pigs.
Mike Nichols asked if I would do The Birdcage. Mike and I are dear friends but he had never offered me a feature role in a movie. My television career opened other doors for me.
I had a lot of coaching for the movie and no, I have never sung professionally before.
I figured, if I failed, I'd tried something that I hadn't tried before and if one movie was going to destroy my career than I didn't have much of a career to start with. I just went for it. God willing I wasn't over the top and didn't embarrass myself.
I did this movie called 'Lymelife' when I was 18, and you know, it was the first time I was working as an adult, a legal adult, and that was a huge growing experience for me.
I was surprised that the TV series was popular itself, but after that it went on to become more popular over the years and thus it seemed eventually that they would turn it into a movie.
I'm really in no danger of being perceived as a famous movie actor!
For me, the best high school movie is, like, 'Fast Times' and what Cameron Crowe is like.
My feeling is... when you show up to a movie set where there's, like, 50 people standing around and months of preparation gone into it, you want to be as prepared as possible, so you should make a million baguettes. That might not actually help in any explicit way, but it'll make you feel more prepared.
The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. 'Larry Crowne' creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message.
They can't make any of these talented young actors Fletch. You might as well make a movie called Chevy Chase.
As soon as people see my face on a movie screen, they knew two things: first, I'm not going to get the girl, and second, I'll get a cheap funeral before the picture is over.
Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn't a hit, you shouldn't view it as a mistake.
'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too.
I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.
You either ignore the comic book and make a great movie or you stay very close to the comic book.
I'd like to make mistakes on my own dime and not have a herd of people tell me what I'm doing wrong. and I'm also still trying to find and develop my voice as a filmmaker, and I think that's easier to do on your own terms than trying to satisfy a bunch of people that are paying for the movie.
You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see.
Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.
For 120 minutes, 'Birdman' floats from comedy to surrealism to high drama to quiet brilliance. I felt so inspired by watching this movie. It reaches for the sky and never comes back down to earth.
Everybody says, 'You impress me as a guy who never wanted to be a movie star.' I say, 'Everybody in the world wants to be a movie star.'
The way I see it, if you're going to make an action movie, you've got to make one with John Woo.
I shot a lot of close-ups on this movie 'cause there's like a dual mystery, she's searching through her haunted past to find some truth and she's also following an external mystery where she comes to think she might be the killer.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
I don't know if I'm going to do any more acting. It's a great job, you know? Make a movie? Why not?
I was able to read a movie before I was able to read a book.
