Quotes

[on his role in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)]: "To this day, I can't believe I was so brazen to think I could pull off the Jesus role."

I don't think people want to see me as a regular guy, besides, I'm a regular guy in real life. I guess I just want to be reckless in my work.

Casting people feel that they have to get someone who looks a certain way, and I think that the jury is still out whether people find me attractive or not.

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, 'Man, you were so honest - can't you have some fun? Can't you do some really down and dirty lying?' But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I'll be punished.

Weirdness is not my game. I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin.

The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.

I'm one of those people who when I go over a bridge, I want to jump. It's just this intense tickle in the back of my throat. It's like I'm on the verge the whole time I'm walking over that bridge, and I'm not going to get a release until I jump.

...it's very clear that a lot of people that have really strong instincts as actors are very often inarticulate...Sometimes, you know, classically, if someone's very intellectual, they aren't as connected to the doing of things. And the doing is really the key to finding the emotionality and the spirit of things.

[on whether good actors help other actors]: "You're always looking for good people to work with, because you feed each other. That's all."

[on why he became an actor]: "You know, it shifts. When it starts out in the beginning, I think it's purely a social thing. The thing you get reinforcement for, it's a way of acting out. It's a way of getting attention. It's a way of just fitting in socially. And then, as I get older, it transforms into something else."

I never act. I simply bring out the real animal that's in me.

I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but as we know, that's not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns, there's lots of reasons. When something doesn't do better than it deserves to in your mind, it's pretty transparent, you usually know why. Is that a comfort? Yes, because it's logical. Does it make you happy? No, because if you think a movie is beautiful or interesting, you want to share it. It's really true; there's no accounting for taste. Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren't meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not. While we have a very strong popular culture, the roots of our culture are very shallow, and we put emphasis on how a movie does as far as the box office goes. Many years ago, it would have been vulgar to print box-office grosses in the paper. Now The New York Times does it, and it's the big story for people interested in arts and entertainment on Monday. Which is why emphasis has shifted away from filmmakers and fallen on movie stars and business people.

Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.

When you look back at your experiences, it's true that sometimes the most horrendous experiences can translate into being your best work.

All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions you're not growing.

Sometimes I have a desire to control what I do a little bit, especially when I do a smaller movie. But basically, my impulses are the impulses of a child. I like being the thing itself. I don't like thinking about it. And that doesn't mean I'm not analytical or that I'm anti-intellectual. I'm not trying to say I'm a totally intuitive kind of guy. It's just that my real pleasure, where I feel vital and everything drops away, is when I'm in the middle of doing it, and I look for that opportunity untainted by other responsibilities. But I'm getting too serious. When I try to explain what I do, I get a little bit disgusted with myself because I come off too earnest. In the simplest terms, it's a pleasure to borrow someone else's body and someone else's life. That's the craft, and it's a bit like voodoo, because you don't know exactly how you do it. - On his acting style.

It's one of those invented things. I spend a lot of time in Germany so it's in my head. I didn't feel the need to go to a dialogue coach and be very strict with it because that's not in the spirit of how it should be approached. My take was that it should be played with and invented. It's my idea of a Germanish accent - On his accent in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).

Sometimes I envy their power and money, and other times I feel sorry for them since they have a gun to their head. They have so much to protect that they have to be very careful, thus very certain every step of the way, and that leaves out a lot of work of any freshness. I don't want to do that - I'm not that kind of actor. - On top Hollywood actors.

On principle I don't have favorites. To pass judgment on something you've done is a face-saving act, and I think it kinda stinks. There are all kinds of movies, all kinds of impulses and all kinds of needs for people watching movies, and sometimes I'll do a movie that I don't particularly care for, but then I'll run into someone that it speaks to and they love it. So for me, to give my personal take on it, could mean ruining that movie for someone else, because they can find pleasure where I can't. - On his favorite roles.

Most of the work happens when you're on the set. It's like going to a cocktail party - you know who's going to be there, you have certain expectations about the topics of conversation and the social dynamic. At the same time, when you arrive, you've got to be able to abandon those preconceptions and be mercurial. But sometimes the most important thing is just having a good costume. - On preparation for the characters he plays.

I always like to mix it up. It's like anything. If you're eating pasta for a week, eventually, you crave something else. A balanced diet of different roles and different stories and movies - I think it's the way to stay healthy artistically and career wise. It does a funny thing because you're not refining one way of seeing you. That's one way to have a career. You can make a persona, corner a market, and make yourself almost a thing. You can use that and that can be interesting iconographical but I still am that actor who likes to bend myself to the material rather than find material to support some idea of who I am or some persona that I've made, or some mask that I've made. - On his career.

On The Last Temptation of Christ (1988): It had a profound influence on me. Marty [Scorsese] had made this movie in his head for years, and I felt privileged to be involved.

[2004, on selection parts] I'm always looking for an adventure-I try not to work just to work. I always try to find people that are burning to tell a story and then help them do it. I try to avoid anyone that pokes around-filmmaking should be an opportunity to make something that's very thrilling and, you know, exciting. On some level, I'm a sensation junkie.

I'm always very fond of laconic, cut-off characters that have a rich inner life, and you have to restrain that.

There's a funny perception that I play bad guys, but if you really know my movies, the big and small ones, the truth is often I play good guys. But they're good guys that are flawed, good guys who are outside of society. They're odd or they're criminals, but morally they tend to function as good people.

[on being a veteran on a set with mostly newcomers in The Florida Project (2017)] My job is to fit in with them. I'm aware that I have more experience, but when we're all in the room together, we're just trying to help one another. I had to fit in with them; that's the real takeaway, and that's the pleasure, because whenever you're in a movie, that's your job. You want to be the fabric of the story, you want to be woven into it. You don't want to show off. You don't want to stick out. [Nov. 2017]

[on The Florida Project (2017)] The script was excellent. I liked the world. I didn't quite know what the character was until I started doing it. I also liked Sean [director Sean Baker] a great deal. He has a great film culture; he's smart. He's also a one-man band in that he really rolls up his sleeves, edits his own work, writes his own work. I mean, we're talking auteur-land, and I like that. [Nov. 2017]

[on The Florida Project (2017)] I grew up middle class, but I was always aware of poverty, even in the little mill town I was raised in. Now, as I go through life, I recognize those people are us. That was the process of making the movie, too. We were working with people who were actually living in that motel, and it informed what we were doing. Hopefully, people will see how precarious all our lives are if we don't help each other. There's a strong humanist message to the story. (...) The people whose story we're telling are basically living in the room next door. Sometimes they would help us as extras and in other ways. Some of the performers were in a similar situation, where they were longtime temporary residents in hotels. So we were working with people who had this type of life. (...) The fact that this is going on in the shadow of Disney World and this area of entertainment - a place to be happy and to be diverted - is significant. But I also think the film isn't pointing any fingers. Disney employs a lot of people, and they give money toward this problem and help to solve this problem, so it's not taking Disney to task, but it is clear that this problem is happening in the shadow of a place where people go to have fun. [Nov. 2017]

"How did it affect your performance being in the presence of real destitution and real desperation?" Marc Maron "It keeps you honest. You don't make a bullshit movie. You honor those people, and they stop being 'those people' and they become *your* people. Because you're one of them - just by sheer proximity. You're talking to them, they're telling you stories - that informs everything. You're down with them. And it may be temporary, and you have no illusion." - in response to Marc Maron asking how it affected his performance being in the presence of real destitution and desperation, while filming The Florida Project (2017)