Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Woody Allen

festreviews Happy Birthday
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QUOTES:

  • [in 1977] This year I’m a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?
  • On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
  • [asked if he liked the idea of living on on the silver screen] I’d rather live on in my apartment.
  • [on films] I can’t imagine that the business should be run any other way than that the director has complete control of his films. My situation may be unique, but that doesn’t speak well for the business–it shouldn’t be unique, because the director is the one who has the vision and he’s the one who should put that vision onto film.
  • Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs.
  • There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
  • Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
  • I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don’t care about the films. I don’t care if they’re flushed down the toilet after I die.
  • Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.

Happy Birthday Terrence Malick

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QUOTES:

  • [on working with Martin Sheen on Badlands (1973)] Martin Sheen was extraordinary. He’s a very gifted man. He’s from a working class family, so he had all the moods down for the film. And when he wasn’t before the cameras, he was helping in the background, wrapping cables, packing up light reflectors. One day I found him going around a gas station and picking up aluminum snapback lids from soda cans. He knew they didn’t exist in 1959.
  • [on The New World (2005)] I knew it would have a slow, rolling pace. Just get into it; let it roll over you. It’s more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself.
  • [on his future] There’s a good many pictures I’d like to make, we’ll see how many I’ll be allowed to make.
  • [on his methodology] I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can’t. My attitude is always let it keep rolling.
  • [on the cinematography of Days of Heaven (1978)] With Néstor Almendros, we decided to film without any artificial light. It wasn’t possible in the houses at night, but outside, we shot with natural light or with the fire. When the American team was saying, ‘This is not how we should proceed,’ Nestor Almendros, very courageously insisted. As we filmed, the team discovered that it was technically easier, and I was able to capture absolute reality. That was my wish: to prevent the appearance of any technique, and that the photography was to be processed to be visually beautiful and to ensure this beauty existed within the world I was trying to show, suggesting that which was lost, or what we were now losing.

Happy Birthday Gael García Bernal

festreviews Happy Birthday
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Born

November 30, 1978 · Guadalajara, Mexico

QUOTES:

  • Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.
  • Talent survives and remains while beauty is diluted.
  • Histories are to educate, so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.
  • I believe fervently in the nature, in truth and imagination, I believe in the blood, in life, words, and motivations.
  • I think we’re all political, in a way. What has happened recently in my case is that, fortunately, I’ve been able to get more in touch with the things I can change and do.

Happy Birthday: Virginia Mayo (1920-2005)

festreviews Happy Birthday
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QUOTES:

  • I must say Jack Palance was a drag. We were together in The Silver Chalice (1954). The way he did his work was strange. He was a weird actor and I didn’t like working with him at all.
  • [on Doris Day] I loved working with her. We used to call her Miss Sparkle Plenty because she was so vivacious.
  • James Cagney was the most dynamic man who ever appeared on the screen. He should have won five Oscars, he was so fabulous. He stimulated me to such an extent. I must say that I didn’t have to act very much; I just had to react to him because he was so powerful.
  • [on Alan Ladd] And I worked with Alan Ladd who, along with Gregory Peck, was my favorite leading man. He was a beautiful man, charming and gentle, and I think, of all my leading men, he worked best with me.
  • [on how she met her husband, Michael O’Shea] He just sat there watching me, and then he walked right up and kissed me.
  • I was a better actress than I was given credit for. I know that for a fact. But you get stamped . . . categorized as pretty, a beauty, shapely . . . and you’re just stamped for life.
  • Working with comedians like [Bob Hope] and [Danny Kaye] taught me timing, pace and fine points of acting I never would have learned otherwise.
  • The blacklisting that took place in Hollywood was slightly different than how you hear of it today. There was a genuine Communist threat in this country and there were Communistic actors, directors, screenwriters and producers in Hollywood trying to grab control of the industry and use it for their own end, which was to spread Communist propaganda throughout the country and the world. The system used to get rid of the Communists was bad. Joseph McCarthy and his methods were a little cruel and drastic. But the Communist danger was there. And it has grown.

Happy Birthday Elisha Cuthbert

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QUOTES:

  • [on having to wear the same wardrobe all season on 24 (2001)] I feel like I’m one of The Simpsons
  • I believe not giving up on doing things.
  • I was lucky . . . [in Los Angeles] I found what I wanted to do when I was 11.
  • [on The Girl Next Door (2004)] I don’t ever want to be doing the same sort of thing, I never want to be typecast, because I have way too much to give to be sort of, to always be the hot chick in the movie.
  • I definitely believe in fate. And I believe what you put in is what you get in return. That’s the way it’s worked for me. As for the big picture–there’s some sort of plan.
  • [asked about moving from Montreal to Los Angeles at age 17] I just went with my gut feeling and thought that if I care this much about what I’m doing, then maybe there are opportunities elsewhere and I’d be stupid not to give it a try.
  • [on her performance in a Weezer video] I remember just sort of thinking, “I’m not going to get to do this too, too often”, so I just went crazy and threw alcohol around. I was acting ridiculous and screaming at everybody and throwing a fit.
  • [about moving back to Montreal] With friends and family in Montreal, it’s always in the back of my mind. I like going back. I miss the nightlife. It’s such a great city. I’ve been a lot of places in the world, and I’m sure I’m biased because I grew up there, but I love it.

Happy Birthday Kaley Cuoco

festreviews Happy Birthday
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QUOTES:

  • I love the fashion world. I love clothes. I love style.
  • After everything happened, we all got super tight. I can’t deny it. We all just love each other. James Garner and David Spade came on and we fell in love with them too. We’ve just become a family all over again. We don’t want to lose anyone again.
  • Finally, there was a moment when it just hit me. John [Ritter] wouldn’t want me to sit on my butt for the rest of my life feeling sorry for myself or sorry for him. As cheesy as it sounds, he would have wanted us to go on.
  • For me, what I really want to come out of it is to show people that I can hold together a movie, be the number one character and play someone who is twenty or twenty-one.
  • I will always be the way I was a couple years ago before anything happened. And that’s to my parents’ credit, my amazing parents who have been around me my whole life and raised me right. I’m very happy with what has happened so far.
  • John [Ritter] was the smartest and most amazing comedian I’ve ever worked with. I think more than teaching me about acting or comedy, he taught me about life and the love of people and respect of people.
  • My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I’ve been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don’t talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.

Happy Birthday Don Cheadle

festreviews Happy Birthday

QUOTES:

  • I’ve been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles. Thirty years later, there’s still the same sort of excitement I get from it. It’s still fun to inhabit different characters and play different things, so it’s all in that panoply of acting.
  • I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you’re a black man that’s always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.
  • In fifth grade I was Templeton the Rat in a production of ‘Charlotte’s Web’. I remember I had a friend who worked in a doughnut shop. I’d go in, get a doughnut and sit there with my script, going over the lines and making notes in the margin. I was serious!
  • (2008 quote) I’m very critical of myself. I’ve yet to see a great performance from this kid. No, it’s not comfortable; I hate watching myself. You don’t like when you hear your voice on your voicemail; imagine having to see yourself 30 feet wide and 30 feet big.

Happy Birthday Joel Coen

festreviews Happy Birthday

Been married to Frances McDormand since 1984.

QUOTES:

  • We’ve never considered our stuff either homage or spoof. Those are things other people call it, and it’s always puzzled me that they do.
  • The bigger stars we’ve worked with have been without the movie-star vanities or meshugaas that you read about and dread. [George Clooney], for example, was the opposite. He has no entourage. He’s a big movie star, but a nice guy.
  • [Ethan Coen] had a nightmare of one day finding me on the set of something like The Incredible Hulk (2008), wearing a gold chain and saying, “I’ve got to eat, don’t I?”
  • [Ethan Coen] once described the way we worked together as: one of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat. That’s why there needs to be two of us – otherwise he’s gotta type one-handed. That’s how you “collaborate” with someone else.
  • [upon winning the Oscar for Best Director for No Country for Old Men (2007)] In the late ’60s, when [brother Ethan Coen] was 11 or 12, he got a suit and a briefcase and we went to the Minneapolis International Airport with a Super 8 camera and made a movie about shuttle diplomacy called “Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go”. And, honestly, what we do now doesn’t feel much different from what we were doing then.

Happy Birthday Gemma Chan

festreviews Happy Birthday

Born

November 29 · London, England, UK

QUOTES:

  • It’s really rare in TV not to think, ‘Well, I’ve seen a version of this before.’
  • Making a pretty picture, an image, is a completely different thing from acting to camera.
  • I think ‘Humans’ is more about provoking the idea that there is a class of beings in society that we treat as less than… as subordinates; people who we treat badly and take for granted. Often they are the same people who work hard to keep the city going. We need to think about that.
  • Save the Children is also working to improve accommodation for refugee families living outside settlements. I met a family which had been living in a substandard building without windows, doors or a toilet.
  • I hate the idea that people should listen to what actors have to say on certain issues more than anyone else. Actors have no more right to be heard than anyone.
  • I visited a Child Friendly Space where children take part in structured play and development activities in a safe environment. These are designed to develop their cognitive ability as well as address their psychosocial needs. As I watched them sing songs and take part in games, it struck me that these kids could be anywhere in the world.
  • My parents are wonderful, practical, sensible people, and the expectation was that I would study something academic.

Happy Birthday Lauren German

festreviews Happy Birthday

Quotes

  • I’m very klutzy. I’ve fallen off horses, I’ve tripped with my high-heeled boots over a stunt guy.
  • I always get cast as the girl who’s dying or the girl who’s killing or the girl who’s suicidal – all these heavy roles. But I like playing them.
  • I’d love to do comedy.
  • [why she doesn’t act nude] My body is perfect and so great, I don’t think everyone’s ready for it. Do you know what I mean?