Clint Eastwood
I always thought what an interesting idea because almost everybody's fascinated by the perpetrator of a crime; very few people study what happens to people for the rest of their lives, and how it affects not only that particular character but other characters around him as well.Collection: Character
People have lost their sense of humor. In former times, we constantly made jokes about different races.Collection: Race
Hollywood, as everyone knows, glamorizes physical courage. . . . if I had to define courage myself, I wouldn't say it's about shooting people. I'd say it's the quality that stimulates people, that enables them to move ahead and look beyond themselves.Collection: Moving
When you're making a film you start living with it, and I find myself sitting down and figuring out a sound or melody that would go with a film, or a particular period. It's not brain surgery, you just kind of feel it along.Collection: Brain
I pay tribute to the writing always. The writer is a creative artist and the director is an interpretive artist and the actors are interpretive. You take zero and make it into something, that's always amazing to me.Collection: Zero
Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less. Unfortunately, there's a style of acting going round, especially with the younger actors, where they talk without even moving their lip. Maybe it's because my hearing probably isn't what it was 40 years ago but I'm sitting there going "What did they say"?Collection: Moving
Everybody's got a right to be a sucker ... once.Collection: Sucker
That's why I don't rehearse a lot and why I shoot a lot immediately. I have ideas of where I'd like to take the character, but we both end up going together.Collection: Character
You have to go with your instincts.Collection: Instinct
I had one well known director who kept saying, "Now Clint, this is what ...." And I'd say, "I know. I read the script. I'm the one who cast you as the director. Let me show you and you'll correct me if I'm wrong."Collection: Directors
Everybody always feels that they're right even if they're wrong and that's what a whole actor's career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you're playing.Collection: Character
I'm suffering from oxygen deprivation. It's overwhelming watching your career go by.Collection: Oxygen
There's a lot of young guys coming along, but I'd like to say to the various financiers, don't forget the senior guys. The senior guys and gals are there, willing to do their best work for you.Collection: Senior
If you read any of the biographies on J. Edgar Hoover, you find that they contradict each other more than they agree. Often times, they're often told from a political perspective.Collection: Perspective
I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?Collection: Movie
I'm past doing one chin-up more than I did the day before. I just kind of do what I feel like.Collection: Past
A lot of times people get to a certain age and they quit. I always felt sorry for the Frank Capras, the Billy Wilders, directors like that, because they quit in their sixties. Why would you quit? Think of the great work they could've done in their sixties, seventies, and on up.Collection: Sorry
What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.Collection: Thinking
A Love like this happens but once in a lifetimeCollection: Once In A Lifetime
The main thing is, you just want to have your place in history. You hope that people will look back on it in 15, 20, 30 and beyond years, and say, "That was an exciting film."Collection: Years
I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that after a few years I'd get tired of looking at myself on the screen and say: "Hey, let's not do that any more." But then every once in a while something pops up. I'm not saying it won't happen again but probably the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group.Collection: Tired
A man's just gotta know his limitsCollection: Men
I believe that everybody, whether you believe in the afterlife or the chance of a near-death experience and you come back and you see someone [on the other side] - whether that has happened or not, I don't know, but certainly everyone has thought about it at some point or another in time. It's a fantasy that if there is anything out there like that, it would be just terrific, but that remains to be seen.Collection: Believe
After directing awhile, you get an instinct about it, but you have to be able to trust your own feelings. Invariably, two-thirds of the way through a film, you say, "Jeezus, is this a pile of crap! What did I ever see in it in the first place?" You have to shut off your brain and forge ahead, because by that time you're getting so brainwashed. Once I commit myself to a film I commit myself to that ending, whatever the motivations and conclusions are.Collection: Motivation
I like the inspiration of the first take.Collection: Inspiration
Twenty-some states in the United States have statutes that say showing the nipples to children is oscene. That's the first thing we come into contact with when we arrive on this palnet: a woman's breasts!Collection: Children
The reason I still work at this stage of life is because I enjoy learning something new each day.Collection: Learning Something New
You get to a certain age and you're just glad to be there. I don't know what to add to that. It's fun. You have to be a realist, so you try to look for roles that are within the age you are.Collection: Fun
A lot of people when they retire, they just expire. It happens to men more than women. Women usually have great interest in the family, because the family's always growing and they're always coming to the rescue.Collection: Men
I was forty the first time I directed. I formed a company in 1967, looking to the future. My dad taught me that whatever you do, do it well. Be the best at what you can do for that particular job in life. That always resonated with me.Collection: Dad
At some point in your fife, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there's nothing really to talk about. And I think we're at a point now where a lot of older women take better care of themselves, compared to the 1940s and '50s when women were programmed to figure it's all over after 30.Collection: Thinking
I don't necessarily look for dark themes; they just seem to appear.Collection: Dark
I have great respect for the FBI, and I know that there have been some rumors lately that the FBI was disenchanted because of what we were doing in story, or doing a certain take: that's not true. Actually the FBI was tremendously enthusiastic about us doing [ J. Edgar Hoover ] film.Collection: Rumor
When you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one.Collection: Thinking
Everybody puts importance in money on a film set.Collection: Film
In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.Collection: Ideas
All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy and a lot of them, the majority of them, haven't won Oscars.A lot of people are crying, I guess.Collection: People
I just don't want to copy the current trends or do movies for teenagers. I want people to get more out of movies.Collection: Teenager
I was kind of a little disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty (Martin Scorsese) and me. I have the greatest respect for him and all the films he's done over the years.Collection: Years
I don't know how everybody else feels, but I just long for reality rather than these made-up things.Collection: Reality
Everybody wants to make something they think is a surefire winner, though nobody knows what a surefire winner is, in my opinion.Collection: Thinking
You change as the years go by. The more knowledge you get, the more things change in your life and circumstances change.Collection: Years
If you've done what you intended and if nobody tampered with it, then it's yours. And if people don't like it, then they just don't agree with you on that subject matter, and that's life.Collection: People
Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.Collection: Art
The best part of aging in this business is losing that obsession about work and being able to spend a little more time with family.Collection: Age
The cruelty of nature is you have to work out harder when you get older ... It should be the other way around: Work out hard when you're a kid you should be able to coast when you get older. But unfortunately you have to do more to stay in the same position.Collection: Kids
Westerns. A period gone by, the pioneer, the loner operating by himself, without benefit of society. It usually has something to do with some sort of vengeance; he takes care of the vengeance himself, doesn't call the police. Like Robin Hood. It's the last masculine frontier. Romantic myth. I guess, though it's hard to think about anything romantic today. In a Western you can think, Jesus, there was a time when man was alone, on horseback, out there where man hasn't spoiled the land yet.Collection: Jesus
I'd like to be a bigger and more knowledgeable person ten years from now than I am today. I think that for all of us as we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping our minds active and open.Collection: Thinking
You have to teach yourself to act but Michael Chekhov will give you the necessary tools - and for me, Psychological Gesture and Centers are extremely valuable They work like a charm. I've used them all along and still do.Collection: Giving