Quote collection
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"I always felt that if you're not trying something different each time out of the gate, you're being safe, and you don't ever want to find that place of safety. I like that, each time, before I even go in front of the cameras, the studio's reaction will be fear."
"It really depends on what the screenplay is asking of you, and what your responsibility is to that character. You have the author's intent to deal with, you have the filmmaker's vision, and then you have your own wants, desires and needs for the character. It's collaborative. But I knew, right off the bat, that there was no way to go into some sort of pink-haired, clown-nosed character with Ronald McDonald shoes."
"And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book."
"I've always been frightened of karaoke, so I've never tried it. Karaoke scares the hell out of me!"
"If I can avoid the mirror when I brush my teeth in the morning, I will. I find security and safety in the most profound degree of ignorance. If you can just stay ignorant of almost everything you'll be OK. It's fine to stay informed and look at things, but to judge things will bog you down."
"I'm a big fan of revenge, I think [Sweeney Todd] it's a story of a man who clearly has obsessions to avenge the horror that happened to him."
"Here I was going to work with Pacino thinking, "I'm not going to get lucky twice. There's no way. This guy is going to hand me my ass." He looks like the kind of guy who's going to hand you your ass. It's Al Pacino."
"The weirdest thing in the world is to see some guy who is just super earnest."
"I toyed with the idea of what it might be like to live with some species of heatstroke that maybe didn't go away all that quickly. He's a pirate, which is about rum, sodomy and the lash, isn't it? So, to be able to keep things like that in my head, when I'm going to do a film for Disney, I'd been through the ringer. That was like infiltrating the enemy camp. I wasn't able to stop smiling."
"I'd worked with Marlon [Brando] a couple of times, and he was a practical joker. He was far more interested in getting jokes out than getting the words out. We laughed all the time."
"I don't drink hard liquor anymore, but I sometimes order Lagavulin just for the smell. It's so good. It's unbelievable."
"I would say that he has a rather limited and uncreative way of looking at the situation."
"Barrie and the wonderful characters he created, Lewis Carroll, even French literature, like Baudelaire or over in the States, Poe, you open those books, you open The Flowers of Evil and begin to read. If it were written today, you'd be absolutely stupefied by the work. It's this incredible period where the work is timeless, ageless. So yeah, I just love all those guys. It's my deep passion in those great 19th century writers."
"America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive. My daughter is four, my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out."
"Trips to the dentist - I like to postpone that kind of thing."
"I've been told I smell good. I don't look like I smell good."
"My recipe for success is chance, basically. Just luck. It's a miracle that people still hire me after some of the stuff I've gotten away with. Honestly!"
"You can go out and try to do the best work that you can do within the context of what that is, but it's really gotta be about the work and what you're focusing on."
"I hope some day to make you all a cup of coffee. Alright, peace."
"I realized that it was great to have a job, but it didn't have anything remotely to do with what I was striving for, so why was I doing it?"