There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.
Sean Penn
I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned, except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn't have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things.
We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.
That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.
Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it.
I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.
Selling a movie feels like a hustle to every bone in my body. Many actors have careers dominated by modeling. They're all over the place. It turns me off. People who are good at what they do ought to practice something bigger.
When I was growing up and somebody like Robert De Niro had a movie come out, it was a cultural event. Because he had such a confidence and a single mission that was so intimate.
I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.
I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.
It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.
When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life.
At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.
Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.
I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.
So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in.
I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.
I am a Justin Timberlake fan.
I choose movies that I think will speak to what's important.
The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.
In my teens, I fell in love with the movies.
A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them.
Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.
'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head.
My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.
In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.
Putting something in a movie because it's in the news doesn't make it political to me. If you're not going outside the same old, same old, if you're not pushing the envelope, then you're not doing anything. A good movie is a political thing.
Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.
There is a strength of character in the people who have, by and large, never experienced comfort.
What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.
Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.
You're always having to live more to fuel something new. It's an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle.
Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.
I think we all have light and dark inside us.
I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.
I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.
The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.
Haiti kind of gets a hold of you.
I'll tell you what I probably would prefer to happen less and less: actors that I know and respect in shampoo ads. Or modeling.
You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.
If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.
I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.
There is no re-inventing the wheel.
I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.
I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.
Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.
Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.
On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.
I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.
