There's a lot of crazy, weird people out there. It's an ugly world.
Ben Affleck
If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I'd call.
Narcissism is the part of my personality that I am the least proud of, and I certainly don't like to see it highlighted in everybody else I meet.
I went to the University of Vermont because I had a kind of unrequited love for this high school girlfriend. She wasn't even at the University but at another school nearby. But I thought if went to a school near her, just maybe... I was really remedial about girls in so many ways.
There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches.
Anxiety is a kind of fuel that activates the fight-or-flight part of the brain in me. It makes sure that a velociraptor isn't around the corner and that you do as much as you possibly can to survive. Because Hollywood has a lot in common with 'Jurassic Park' and its primeval-dinosaur universe.
I'm not the type of guy who enjoys one-night stands. It leaves me feeling very empty and cynical. It's not even fun sexually. I need to feel something for the woman and entertain the vain hope that it may lead to a relationship.
I've consciously taken on material that's a bit too much for me but not an overreach. The first movie, just about performances. 'The Town,' I learned how to work broader material, develop tension, direct bigger scenes, action sequences. 'Argo,' I experimented with film stock, widened the scope of my geography.
When I look up at the screen and see myself I always have to laugh. Not because I think I'm doing a horrible job, quite the contrary, I just feel it's so surreal to feel like one person can entertain so many at one time.
Marriage hasn't been my thing. But gay people, knock yourselves out!
My father has positional vertigo, and if he flies he gets really dizzy, so he has to drive out to California, which he does a couple times a year. We talk, but we e-mail mostly.
I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It's such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don't want to be a sex symbol.
There is nothing worse that a thirteen-year-old boy. You're embarrassed by your parents, and you're trying to find your independance because, deep inside, you are so dependent on your mom.
I find forgiveness to be really healthy.
The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.
God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money.
I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.
I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play.
People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I've never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn't me at all.
Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.
To answer the question, though: I didn't always want to direct. I just liked the idea of it. If a friend was making a short and needed someone who knew screen direction, I would jump in. It would be horrible, but it led to a short, then another, and another. It was like student films.
My mother gets all mad at me if I stay in a hotel. I'm 31-years-old, and I don't want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. It's humiliating.
The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money.
I'm always described as 'cocksure' or 'with a swagger', and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.
I've finally learnt how to say, 'No comment'. To appear in the tabloids is a real learning curve and a steep one at that. You had better learn quick or you get burnt.
I'm human, just like anybody else.
I've learned to think, I may succeed or fail, but I'm going to do so on the merit of my own instincts.
I'm not the most loathsome man in the world. I've dropped to number nine.
I've never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.
It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them.
There's a lot of noise in the world, and the Internet magnifies that energy.
I'm very insecure. I'm human, just like anybody else.
I grew up in a home environment where I wasn't getting esteem for anything I did.
People of similar political persuasions tend to flock together.
The first thing that I really understood politically and was old enough to get was the failed assassination attempt on Reagan.
You can say what you want about me. You can yell at me with a video camera and be TMZ. You can follow me around and take pictures all you want. I don't care.
Nobody I represent is pretending to be the pope or a role model for young people. People have to live their lives. They have the right to smoke if they want.
But when I felt like I had something to prove? Then I got up early every morning and worked all day long. I didn't know if I had any more talent than anyone else directing, but I knew I could work hard at it, and so I did.
I just feel like sometimes I'm a force to be dealt with. My talents are sometimes overused and also sometimes underused. It's not easy being me.
I'm much more interested in what an actor has to say about something substantial and important than who they're dating or what clothes they're wearing or some other asinine, insignificant aspect of their life.
You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.
Yes, I'm going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President.
I remember back when I was a kid there was a comic strip called Plastic Man. His body was elastic and he could make his extremities as long as he wanted. As a youngster I didn't fully appreciate. But I'm now thinking Plastic Man was probably pretty popular with the ladies.
You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe.
I have a lot of influences. I like to sit down with the cinematographer a month before, and we'll watch pieces of 20 or 30 movies. You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.
Rumors about me? Calista Flockhart, Pam Anderson, and Matt Damon. That's who I'm dating.
My kids aren't celebrities. They never made that bargain. We were offered a lot of money to sell pictures of our kids when they were born. You'll notice there aren't any. I make no judgment about people who decide differently; a lot of them give the money to charity. For me, it was a matter of principle.
I didn't do anything for two years but work on 'Gone Baby Gone,' and it was miserable and hard, but at the end? It is a good movie. I liked it very much. If it had been dismissed and deemed worthless, it would been definitely devastating. But that didn't happen.
The first day of 'The Town' was one of the most satisfying days of my career.
You get old, you slow down.
