Blythe Danner is somebody whose career I admire. She’s a great actress and does good work, but also has a life of her own. I love my job but, at the end of the day, I want to come home and watch a movie and drink a bottle of wine with my husband.
I was never the class clown or anything like that. When I was growing up and doing theatre in Seattle, I was always doing very dramatic work. Now I can’t get a dramatic role to save my life!
[on losing herself in her relationships]I made that mistake, I think, a little bit, like ‘I’m checking my relationship off the list and if that would be the final piece of advice I could give you, that would be know your worth, know your independence.
Life is too short to be in relationships where you feel this isn’t fully right or somebody doesn’t have your back, or somebody doesn’t fully value you. Don’t be afraid to feel your independence if things aren’t right.
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QUOTES:
I was very happy playing sports until I was 18, and then there were a couple of years where I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I saw some theatre in Oklahoma and made a decision to learn about acting. It wasn’t really with an eye on making films or even making a living; it was really about trying to focus on something that had the potential of taking the place of sport in terms of something to penetrate.
I don’t intentionally choose movies that aren’t going to be successful commercially. It just happens that the most interesting scripts I read are outside the mainstream. I like characters who have an edge to them, who are going to do something unexpected.
Acting is not a competition to me. One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.
[on Senator John McCain, whom he portrayed in Game Change (2012)] He’s a man with a tremendous sense of honor and duty. And I think, when he decided to go into politics, his ambition and his ego were in constant conflict with this sense of honor and duty and patriotism.
When I was a kid, it wasn’t very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.
It’s so exciting to headline a film. It’s not every day you see a Latina carrying a full-length feature.
I have been a fan of Dexter (2006) since the pilot. Once I got the audition I just squealed, and you would have thought I just won $45 million.
I’m dating a very high-maintenance career.
To me, acting is like tennis. You’re only as good as the person you’re playing with, so if you’re playing with Michael C. Hall, what do you have to worry about?
Latinos are the fastest growing minority, and we’re obviously not going anywhere. We’re extremely loyal as a people, and I think Hollywood is starting to recognize that. It’s very rare for a major studio to nationally distribute a film with Latino talent, not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera.
What’s the point of being an Australian guy traveling through India if you are going to go to India to meet other Australians?
I believe that human beings are born first and given passports later. I’m really thankful for my journey. And it’s a journey I didn’t design.
The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it’s just to see what you learn for the next one.
Most of cinema nowadays is about shooting a lot and then figuring it out in the cutting room, rather than seeing your film it the head and see what’s in your head and not shoot what you have already envisioned in your head.
When people see some depth you never intended that’s really cool, you just put on a face and say “Oh, yeah, that was deep”. What are you going to say? I’m just a moron with luck?
When you work with kids, people tell you to be very delicate, but that’s the last thing you should do with kids. They feel patronized if you’re like that. They just want you to be normal.
[on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)] I honestly don’t know if they are things that Bryan would want out there, so I’ll keep them quiet. But things about her family-she’s kind of a tragic figure in a way. She’s been through a lot, and that’s why she’s so guarded and mysterious.
[on breaking into the indie film world with Smashed (2007)] It’s something I’ve been trying to do for years and years . . . It’s almost like my first movie in a weird way, ’cause it’s my first movie in this world, which is a world I’ve been trying to break into. [I’ve wanted] to be around filmmakers that are trying new things and not part of the system, so to speak, and they’re doing things on their own terms.
[on Death Proof (2007), in which she was a cheerleader] I haven’t, no. I was never a cheerleader. It was funny, because we were asked to wear cheerleading outfits to the audition, and most of the other girls had them because they were cheerleaders at one point and had them hanging in the closet, somewhere. So I went and found this kind of retro-looking, pseudo-cheerleader outfit and it was pretty cool.
[on Death Proof (2007)] Immediately when I heard Quentin Tarantino was having a project, I just wanted to be a part of it in any way I possibly could, even before I read the script. So when I got the script, I was just so excited because there were eight strong female roles, and it’s so rare for me to read a script like that. I’m usually going through the entire thing trying to find what part I’m supposed to be playing because it’s so male oriented and driven.
Hollywood really still is a boys’ club, unfortunately. Everything is from a male perspective. When Bridesmaids (2011) came out it was like this huge revolution, the fact that here was a comedy about women and written by women. It’s sad that it had to be such a big deal. Even though there are amazing female directors and executives it is still really off-balance.
It seems like when women are kicking ass it’s because we have some superpower. What’s so great about Ripley, from Alien (1979), is that she’s just a kick-ass woman. For younger women like myself growing up in the 1980s, to see something like that was really empowering so I really want to find roles like that for that same reason, so that other girls will be able to say, “Wow, she is a totally relatable woman who’s able to be strong and kick butt.”
Matt Smith is an incredible actor and it is going to be so much fun to act alongside him. I just can’t wait to get started.
[on winning the role as Amy Pond on Doctor Who (2005)] I am absolutely over the moon at being chosen to play the Doctor’s new companion. The show is such a massive phenomenon that I can’t quite believe I am going to be a part of it.
I got a recall to come in and read with Matt [the eleventh Doctor] and that was quite funny, actually, because, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that I was auditioning, what I was auditioning for, not even the people in the reception of the place that I was going to. So I had to give them a code name of ‘Panic Moon’. It was fun but it was actually an anagram for ‘companion’ which is quite clever.
I am legitimately Scottish. I can officially say – yes. Yeah, I am from Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland.
To be honest, I wasn’t really a huge follower of Doctor Who (1963) before I got this part. I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who’s a proper diehard Whovian. She’s got a Tardis money-bag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy’s a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic.
[on the Doctor] He’s just really unlikely as a hero – which makes him so brilliant, I think, because he’s like this mad professor.
I wasn’t horrifically bullied. There was some name-calling but nothing awful. All kids get teased about something. And this was quite an obvious feature. When you’re really tall and ginger and white at school, you’re going to get it.
[on Oculus (2013)] I love horror films so much. I like being scared. I want to be in good films, obviously, rather than cheesy ones. And some horror films can be quite cheesy. I love watching them but I don’t necessarily want to be in them.
[asked about some directors she would like to work with] I want to work with Michael Haneke, the Austrian director, more than anything in the world. Can you make that happen for me? I love his films so much. He’s my favourite director in the world.
[on Michael Haneke‘s movies] I like his films because I like big films as well but they’re far more manipulative, like we’re going to make you feel sad at this point, then the music kicks in and you know what you’re supposed to feel, and they’re telling you what to feel, but Haneke’s stuff is just this really unbiased view of events, and you choose how to feel about it, which is fun for me.
[on playing Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)] I was a little worried that I was going to look like an overgrown fetus. Maybe that’s true. But it’s liberating. It’s very liberating. Everyone here should shave their heads.
I would definitely like to continue playing Aquaman. Playing a superhero is a lot of fun. Creating these stories is a lot of fun. I do what I love. And what I love is entertaining people.
I didn’t really grow up a comic book fanatic. I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.
I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.
[on the role of The Daily Show (1996)] When we spot silliness, we say so out loud. We’re not really Democrat or Republican. We’re out to stop that political trend of repeating things again and again until people are forced to believe them.
[in March 2003] I see myself as a driving force for global peace. Since we [The Daily Show (1996)] have been on CNNI [CNN International], the border between India and Pakistan has been stood down from red alert. Coincidence? We’re bringing healing to the international community.
[March 2003, on his role in The Daily Show (1996)] Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center.
[February 2003, about his position at The Daily Show (1996)] I mostly work on writing the show. We have a talented crew of writers and I’m like the managing editor. I am the fake Lou Grant of the fake news world.
[on the attitude of The Daily Show (1996), referring to a role played by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live (1975), September 30, 2002] We have always embraced stupidity. We have always worshipped at the altar of a man bent over with his butt crack exposed, fixing a refrigerator.
[about The Daily Show (1996)] That’s the beauty of our show. Comedy or politics. We’re sort of a mix. A space-age polymer of both. A synthetic comedy-like material.
[in Nov. 2002] I was born in New York City, but I was raised in New Jersey, part of the great Jewish emigration of 1963.
[on being picked to host the 78th Annual Academy Awards] As a performer, I’m truly honored to be hosting the show. Although, as an avid watcher of the Oscars, I can’t help but be a little disappointed with the choice. It appears to be another sad attempt to smoke out Billy Crystal.
I always want to make films. I think of it as a great opportunity to comment on the world in which we live. Perhaps just because I just came off The Hurt Locker (2008) and I’m thinking of the war and I think it’s a deplorable situation. It’s a great medium in which to speak about that. This is a war that cannot be won, why are we sending troops over there? Well, the only medium I have, the only opportunity I have, is to use film. There will always be issues I care about.
You cast not for marquee value but for performance and talent. The right actor for the part. Anything else is a compromise.
[on The Hurt Locker (2008)] War’s dirty little secret is that some men love it. I’m trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat.
Usually what happens is there will be an urgency, and then I can do nothing else but that. [But] events like this [the killing of Osama bin Laden] only come along once or twice in a millennium.
[on Zero Dark Thirty (2012)] I feel we got it right. I’m proud of the movie, and I stand behind it completely. I think that it’s a deeply moral movie that questions the use of force. It questions what was done in the name of finding [Osama bin Laden].
Once you’ve opened the window on topical material, its very hard to close it. Holding up a contemporary mirror is more attractive to me now than ever.
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