Academy Award Winners

"I actually hate comic book movies, like fucking hate them, they just bore me shitless and they're just dumb. But I thought what Chris Nolan did with Batman was actually really good, really well directed, and Christian Bale was really great in it."

"In this industry, interest in you comes in waves, it's so tidal. And so I don't really want to jump on the first wave that comes along."

"You know when you see the preachers down South? And they grab a believer and they go, "Bwoom! I touch you with the hand of God!" And they believe so strongly, they're on the ground shaking and spitting. And fuck's sake, that's the power of belief. Now, I don't believe in Jesus, but I believe in my performance. And if you can understand that the power of belief is one of the great tools of our time and that a lot of acting comes from it, you can do anything."

"It's like anything in life, visualizing the old man you're going to become: As long as you have a clear picture of that — the life you want to lead — eventually you'll probably get there."

"I apologize for my terrible interview skills. I wasn't prepared to expose stories about something so special and wonderfully private that is happening in my life. I guess a part of me wishes that I'd never have to and that maybe I could protect this special time. I was dreaming."

"Matilda is adorable, and beautifully observant and wise. Michelle and I love her so much. Becoming a father exceeds all my expectations. It's the most remarkable experience I've ever had — it's marvelous."

"I just like interesting people. When we worked together on Ned Kelly, Naomi and I definitely had a connection, but it probably happened off screen rather than on, because when you're working there's nothing sexy about 50 people standing around staring at you."

"Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen."

"I don't have a technique. I've never been a believer in having one set technique on how to act. There are no rules and there is no rulebook. At the end of the day, it all comes down to my instincts. That's the one thing that guides me through every decision professionally. Socially, also. That's my technique. Yeah, you read through the script 100 times. I guess I have little characteristics about myself. Sometimes, most often than not, once we start shooting I won't look at the script at all until we finished shooting. It's kind of like it's been imprinted in my head during rehearsals. You just let it go."

"I'm the worst auditioner, really, really bad. I mean, you're being judged and I'm just so aware of it that it consumes me. I can't relax, I'm tied in knots, so the voice is very taut and tense. You're so aware that you're acting 'cause you're sitting across from this lady with a piece of paper who's going, I'm. Going. To. Shoot. You. If. You. Don't. Blah, blah, blah, in this emotionless voice. It's foul. I hate it."

"When anything is blocking my head or there's worry in my life, I just go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don't see the fear. You don't see the pain. You don't see thought. It's just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn't."

"I'm in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood. I only do this because I'm having fun. The day I stop having fun, I'll just walk away. I wasn't going to have fun doing a teen movie again. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I don't. I don't even want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There's so much more I want to discover."

"I love acting. Oh, God, I love it. But all this fame and all this bullshit attention. I'm not supernatural. I've done nothing extremely special to deserve the position. It happens every couple of years, and it's happened to hundreds of people before me."

"[I'm] an extremely private dude and all this is happening so damn quick. I really haven't had any time to rationalize it. But it's nothing that I'm going to let freak me out or take control of me or my thoughts or my real life."

"All of this is so insignificant. In the grand scale of things, there have been so many before who have been in this position. I'm just another one. Life is so short. It's like we're already gone, really, in retrospect."

"I had a year where I sat around on my butt and declined generous offers to do more teen movies and more of the same characters as the one from 10 Things. I was literally living off Ramen noodles and water just because I was sticking to my guns. It was very hard because they offer you so much money. It's so easy to say, 'Ah fuck it, at least I can live and eat.'"

"I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future."

"Fantasy is an 'F' word that hopefully the five second delay won't do anything with"

"I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist."

"Remember, pain is temporary; film is forever."

"I'm a Derek and Dereks don't run"

"Kong bites his head off in a PG13 kinda way"

"And so I look back on not just the last ten years but everything that I've done as being sort of an ongoing growing continual film school. I mean I don't think I've got to a point where I've achieved anything that feels like, a particular milestone, but there's still a lot more to learn and hopefully a lot more films to make."

"I don't take stuff seriously. I saw 'Hellraiser 3' the other day at Cannes; it's OK, it's a good film, I didn't hate it or anything. I thought it was quite good, but it was all just so serious. Some guy walking round with pins sticking out of his face. I just can't sit there and think ,'this is really scary.' If I made a 'Hellraiser' film, I'd like Pinhead to be whacked against a wall and have all the pins flattened into his face."

"I mean, I did ride the Paris subway in an attempt to get pick-pocketed in order to see how exactly they did it. My buddy was videoing the whole thing. No one picked my pocket. We got bolder and bolder as we went, but it didn’t pan out for us."

"My thoughts on veganism are that it’s a wonderful thing to do. I just can’t do it. I tried. Casey Affleck and I made a movie in the desert in Argentina like 12 years ago and he’s a vegan and I tried to eat vegan and I lasted like two days. I just, I literally can’t do it. And I know…that might be bad."

"I think there is really good chance that Sarah Palin could be president and I think that is a scary thing, because I don't know anything about her. I don't think in eight weeks I'm going to know anything about her. I know she was a mayor of a really, really small town, and she is governor of Alaska for less than two years. I just don't understand. I think the pick was made for political purposes, but in terms of governance it is a disaster. You do the actuary tables, you know there is one out of three chance or more that McCain doesn't survive his first term, and it will be President Palin. It really … I was talking about it earlier, it is like a really bad Disney movie, you know. The hockey mom, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she is the president. She is like facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. You know it is absurd. It is totally absurd, and I don't understand why more people aren't talking about how absurd it is. It is a really terrifying possibility. The fact that we have gotten this far, and with that close this being a reality is crazy. I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. That's an important. … I want to know that. I really do. Because she's going to have the nuclear codes, you know. I want to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago or whether she banned books or tried to ban books. I mean, we can't have that."

"It was offered to me. When Spielberg says jump, bitches say how high?"

"It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying."

"Before anything else, she is an actress. I believe that any great artist is an artist first. For example, my father was an artist before he was a husband and a father. Yes, I must say it. Ingrid is that way, too. But she also has many admirable qualities as a woman. She is so honest that she will always prefer a scandal to a lie. If she's at a party and people are talking about a writer who is unknown to her, she'll come out flatly and say, "I haven't read him." But at the same time, she understands more than many people who pretend to be knowledgeable. While she admits her limitations, she has great instinct and understanding."

"For me, Ingrid is a wonderful mother and Roberto, a wonderful father. You should see them with their children. There was nothing intellectual about it. They were like animals with their young, so tactile and sensual. The joy of touching the baby's skin! They were always rolling around on the floor with the twins and the little boy. Once, I remember watching Ingrid doing that, and I thought to myself, "This is just like a mother dog with her puppies.""

"I think my life has been wonderful. I have done what I felt like. I was given courage and I was given adventure and that has carried me along. And then also a sense of humor and a little bit of common sense. It has been a very rich life."

"I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say."

"I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success."

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."

"What is happiness? It depends on two assets, which fortunately I have. They are good health and a short memory."

"What Keaton did physically, is actually quite startling when you discover that he did all of his own stunts… The famous one is when the house falls. He had to stand on a mark. I'm told it was a nail — if he moved an inch to one side he would have been crushed to death."

"Buster Keaton... will be around forever, because it's unlikely that human beings will ever go out-of-date the way special effects do. Keaton running and clambering onto a moving Civil War train in The General is infinitely more exciting than Christian Slater jumping from a helicopter onto a speeding locomotive in Broken Arrow because what Keaton does is real, and the camera captures and preserves his feats for posterity. In Broken Arrow we never see Slater (or the stuntman, for that matter) leaping from the helicopter to the train. Instead there are several cuts, and we must suspend our disbelief and assume that the feat has been accomplished. Which means that it's no feat at all."

"Maybe the trouble is that modern comics strive too hard to be sophisticated and knowing. What we've lost over the years is innocence and, as Keaton and company prove, innocence is an integral part of comedy."

"With his dark, sensitive looks, his face in repose evoking years of quiet contemplation, he resembled a mixture of Buddhist monk and fashion model. He offered the ideal face and acting style for motion pictures, proving less is more. He would become a master of knowing when to do nothing at all."

"Another 'great,' and I use that word very carefully, not the way Milton Berle uses it. One of the reasons I love Buster so much is because he lives comedy as well as practices it. Some of his things are better than Chaplin's."

"It's said that Chaplin wanted you to like him, but Keaton didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask. His films avoid the pathos and sentiment of the Chaplin pictures, and usually feature a jaunty young man who sees an objective and goes for it in the face of the most daunting obstacles. Buster survives tornados, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his eye on his goal. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising, how without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness. Because he was funny, because he wore a porkpie had, Keaton's physical skills are often undervalued … no silent star did more dangerous stunts than Buster Keaton. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own."

"He was doing stuff that was surreal."

"For me its Buster Keaton's face, with maybe his little hat on... It's being able to look into his eyes and see that sad face."

"There are moments in many of his movies that are just poetic... In doing silent movies, no one had done this yet!"

"Watch his beautiful, compact body as it pirouettes or pretzels in tortured permutations or, even more elegantly, stands in repose as everything goes crazy around it. Watch his mind as it contemplates a hostile universe whose violent whims Buster understands, withstands and, miraculously, tames. Watch his camera taking his picture (Keaton directed or supervised all his best films); it is as cool as the star it captured in its glass... The medium was still in its infancy; comics were pioneering the craft of making people laugh at moving images. Keaton, it turns out, knew it all — intuitively."

"I just want that one day, when I retire, that people still remember me like they remember Buster. I really want someone to respect me the way they respect Buster."

"What a creative genius — what an inventor… A guy like that, you just sit back and say, okay, I'll never get there!"

"I could tell you that those wonderful stories were 90% Buster's... I was often ashamed to take the money, much less the credit."

"The screen was just a white sheet. They had this flickering machine. That was the first time I saw this angel with a white face and these beautiful eyes. I knew this was something special. It was the first time I saw Keaton. He wore a flat pancake of a hat, and I just couldn't believe the man's grace."