I did four movies where I gained, like, fifty pounds. I had curly hair, and I had all of this facial hair. I had put on all this weight for these movies, and I did four or five of them back-to-back. Then I cut the weight and I got fit again. I cut my beard and I took away the mustache, and people were like, 'What are you doing?'
A. J. Bowen
As an actor, the ambition is to play interesting characters. And in the indie genre world, the budgets are low. That allows me, as an actor, not to have a financial value behind my name, to justify me being in these bigger parts for these types of movies.
To be fair, I don't think it's a plague to say I have the misfortune of making movies for a living.
I really like suspenseful movies and movies that make you think.
A. J. Cook
I really like 'The Three Kings' DVD. I love that movie and all the extra footage and documentaries.
I joined the Madras Christian College but dropped out after three months. Telugu music director Ramesh Naidu asked me to assist him, and I did so for over a year. I did think of rejoining college, but by then, I was discovering the musician in me. I worked with Illaya Raja and Raj Koti and soon shifted to commercials. This led to movie offers.
A. R. Rahman
Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. 'Wizard of Oz' was the first film I ever saw, followed by the 'Bond' movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who's now based in Toronto.
Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.
The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.
The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.
If 10 people see my movie and all ten really love it, then that means a lot to me, rather than ten million people go and see it and most of them hate it.
Aamir Khan
I remember in high school thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I realize I saw that movie 'And Justice for All' when I was a kid and thought, 'That's what lawyers do, and I want to get up and yell and scream in the middle of a courtroom.'
Aaron Douglas
The great thing about 'Battlestar' was that it was basically 'Star Wars' but once a week, as opposed to waiting for three years for the movie to come out. I was a huge 'Battlestar' fan.
But then, even with sex, I'm more in the school of less is more in movies.
Aaron Eckhart
There are different reasons to make movies.
Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.
Some movies get rushed out right after you make them and I'm not always happy with that.
If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.
I often feel that my days in New York City, that I was here for five years, didn't get one job, went on a thousands of auditions and literally did not get a job on a soap, not a movie, not TV, not nothing, although I did do some commercials thank God.
The newly released movie 'Noah' features a retelling of the creation story that clearly depicts Darwinian evolution transforming a single-cell organism into a monkey. The movie also seems to show magic in scenes more reminiscent of the occult than of the Bible story.
Aaron Klein
I went to the opening of 'Sister Act,' and I had such a great time. I had no idea what it was about, and I had never seen the movies. But I heard the show went through some major last-minute craziness in previews, and man, opening night was really fun and really entertaining.
You know, every time a summer movie comes out, people think they're gonna get rich off of the merchandise.
I used to always sing my way into the movies and the basketball games or whatever. I'd sing for whoever's on the door, and they'd let me in. I used to think I was Nat King Cole back in the day, you know. So I'd sing something like, 'Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you,' and they'd let me in.
A lot of people get emotional in movies that are cartoons, but not in TV shows.
I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.
A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.
I've always thought that there is a great female James Bond movie to be done. I'm not literally calling her Jane Bond, I mean, but a female secret agent.
When a movie is being rolled out, the studio publicists and all our individual publicists get together and come up with bullet points and talking points - 'Make sure you stay away from this,' and 'Don't say that quite that way, because that quote can be taken out of context,' and that kind of thing.
I can't remember my dreams more than a couple of seconds after I wake up. It's frustrating because sometimes I dream that I'm watching a really good movie.
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television - you have air dates to meet.
If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.
'Steve Jobs' is my seventh movie. I believe, if you added them up, I don't think there is more than a total of 10 minutes that takes place in a person's home. They're all in offices, courtrooms, laboratories, things like that.
I worshiped Judd Nelson in 'The Breakfast Club' growing up. I must've seen that movie 100 times.
I'll never be Jennifer Lawrence or Tom Cruise, someone who can hold a movie and then be charming and charismatic doing promotion. I haven't got what they've got. But at least I'm now comfortable just being myself.
It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.
I watched so many movies when I was a kid, and I'd watch them over and over.
My favorite types of movies definitely aren't thrillers, but at the same time you can't deny the genius of Hitchcock's films.
The average Indian doesn't care about Hollywood movies because they have far too many movies of their own to watch, to miss, and I hope a story like 'Million Dollar Arm,' that is actually about India and deals with these two Indian kids, resonates over there and makes people want to go and see the movie.
I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.
A movie is about human beings, about humanity.
A good movie is made by an initial burst of energy, the way that, when you are in school, your class exercises are always better than your final projects.
Some movies bring out the creativity in you. Every single audience member can become creative in the face of a particular movie. If you happen to like my films, it's because my films provide a bed for you on which you can find your creativity. The Hollywood movies do not provide that for you.
I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!
From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.
There haven't been a lot of superhero movies with female leads, and there have been even fewer - if any - that were truly funny. I heard Ant-Man was, but I haven't seen that yet. So, that would be my goal, my dream - to be a super-heroine who's not afraid to be feminine and also not afraid to make people laugh.
An important part of my story is that I didn't walk out of Planned Parenthood immediately after witnessing the ultrasound-guided abortion. It is made to appear that way in the film, 'Unplanned,' because they are trying to fit 10 years of my life into an hour-and-a-half-long movie.
That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.
No one can stop me from talking about my movie.
Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'
My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.