Milo Ventimiglia

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Unless I'm running and yelling, then you really see how crooked my mouth is!
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Running
Image of Milo Ventimiglia
For me, digital is just another avenue. It doesn't mean that it has to be poor quality or poor content. But, you still run into the same struggles. You can't have full-on language, violence or sexual situations. You can't run rampant with the fact that it's digital. You can't do anything you want. You still have a responsibility to tell a story first, and show what the character is going through first, and then maybe you have a little bit of lee-way to show a more real side of life.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Running
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I've got two older sisters, which I think was the best thing, but also the worst thing. They dressed me up like a girl, but at the same time I think they taught me a lot of what they experienced and what they lived through, and passed that on to me as a young man and influenced how I approached not only women, but people. I got very lucky with the family I was born into. From my older sisters to my mother and father, they're just good, kind-hearted people.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Girl
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There were a million different things I could have chosen or wanted to do, but the path of an artist was the one that pulled me the most. I did local theater and plays in school. I think there was a sense of entertaining - being on the stage, making people laugh, making people cry - that I was drawn to. It was also one of those things like, "I can do this for a very long time."
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: School
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I used to sit when I was a kid, from 14 or 15 on, with a book or a paper or a magazine in front of a mirror and teach myself to speak with a more straight mouth, so it wasn't so pronounced.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Book
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I think I had the good fortune to watch Sly the Artist [Sylvester Stallone]; to watch him in all arenas. As an actor, not many people get to see him turn that character on, they don't understand that he's playing a role.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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I pretty much grew up in the Clubber Lang/Ivan Drago era. That was more my time. I've always been a fan of the films, even the fifth, that I know some people didn't care for, I've always enjoyed them.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: People
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I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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Certain things work for me, certain things don't. [Going out for drinks is] about connecting, hanging out, and having a reason to spend time together. But you don't really need any kind of reason, other than you want to spend time with somebody.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Together
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My father was a very fun dad; he was always coaching our soccer sports teams, he made sure that we had activities to do. He was kind of goofy and fun. But at the same time, he had a lot of lessons to teach us so that we didn't grow up and just not be good people. I try and reflect a lot on how I was raised by my father in the character that I'm playing now in being a dad. You've got to be strong for these kids. You also have to be fun and teach them all the lessons, not just one, or two, or three.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Soccer
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You have to be able to sustain life. So moments are going to be lighter, but moments are also going to be heavier. I think just the understanding that life goes in a million different directions, and hopefully, if you find excitement by what these characters are experiencing and what they're living through, and you're impacted by them as human beings, then that's the sustainability of the show [This is Us].
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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Given the loss of a child or the birth of a child or anything like that, I think it's just I'm more moved by life, the older I get, so it's easier to connect to the characters that I play.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Children
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It's a great place to be at 36 because you're an adult and you're responsible for how you impact other people, the direction of your own life [too], but you're also young enough to say, "You know what? I'm not sure of where I'm at, and I'm going to change that course and do something different. I'm going to look at life differently." I think that's the magic of that age.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Thinking
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I think there couldn't be a more perfect time with the state of the world than to come together and share an experience - especially an entertainment experience like This Is Us - to say, "You're different, and I'm different, but we all agree that life should be lived. You should be happy, and we're all deserving of joy."
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Thinking
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I don't like to have to depend on someone else to reset the props. It's like, "No, you've gotta take responsibility for it." I know how things fit and feel. To reset that stuff myself, it's easy. The prop guys are hilarious because I'll have one set of gloves and I'll keep reusing them to get the most out of it. They're like, "We've got boxes of these."
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Responsibility
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As an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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TV is such a success nowadays because it gives back in a way that features can't. If you go to a film, you only get two hours of great storytellers and performers, and you pay top dollar for that. If you're subscribing to premium channels and you're getting all of these amazing TV shows, and you're watching them as you want, where you want, when you want, on what you want, I think that is the "the golden era of TV" in what television shows are offering to audiences. We're giving them a lot more. It's quality.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Thinking
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I'm a homebody. I'd rather be in the kitchen cooking than hanging out in a bar.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Cooking
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I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Real
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My job is always going to change; the characters that I'm playing are always going to change. I look forward to playing a grandfather at some point.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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An audience gets to hang onto the characters for the rest of their lives if they want. I think it's great that the fans do that. It's just not too practical for a man like myself because I have to move on.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Moving
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In THE WHISPERS, I played a father, with an amazingly talented actor, Kyle Breitkopf. I've played a dad a lot, so it's nice again to be in that world [in This Is Us].
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Dad
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[With] this show [This Is Us], I don't think I was seeking something outside of the world I'd always played in so much as I'm ruled by characters. If it's a great character, I'm invested. It doesn't matter what the genre, what the storyline, anything.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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I hope everyone can give the audience that real, true experience. But Mandy [Moore] and I, we definitely jump decades, and I think trying to find a base look, so that I can go back to the Eighties, I can jump to the Nineties, it was like, "All right, Milo, you're living in a moustache for a little while." Which I'm perfectly fine with.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Real
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How can you sustain life? [Dan] Fogelman is magic, and I think the other scripts of his that I've read for this show specifically are as beautiful as the pilot script [of This Is Us]. And he said it in a meeting [regarding the stillbirth of a child], "You can't kill a baby every week." But I think the idea that you can have these impactful moments that are as heightened as the loss of a child - it's life.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Beautiful
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[Sylvester Stallone] and I still touch base. I found out he was a fan of Heroes. That's kind of an amazing thing, when you look up to someone for so many years and they're actually following what you're doing. That's really a nice thing to know.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Nice
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There's kind of like that fright and excitement all at the same time when you first see someone of his stature. Where its literally, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm in the room with Sylvester Stallone." He disarms you. He lets you know when he talks to you, he speaks clearly, he'll make you laugh and he's very kind and warm hearted.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Believe
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I try to be good to myself. Look, we're human and people have differences.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Differences
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I was never one to stand on a soap box and say, "This is how you need to live your life!" It was never about that.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Live Your Life
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[Sylvester] Stallone and I were in a meeting for Rocky Balboa. We were laughing about something, and he looks at my mouth and says to the casting director, "Wow, your lip even hooks down like mine does." Then he looked at the casting director and nodded, and I guess that was the nod of saying, "Hire this kid." So yeah, I have a really crooked mouth. They don't work, but I can feel everything.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Kids
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I felt like it was something that didn't represent how I wanted to present myself. Now I'll see kids I come across on Twitter or Comic-Con, and they'll smile and I'll be like, "You have a crooked mouth like I have a crooked mouth!" We just sit there, and I talk about it with them and they feel better about themselves.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Kids
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I think that's something that always enticed me about the '40s - back then, the glamour and the style - you couldn't really make it up. You just were or you weren't. You either fit in that world or you fit in the other. Things were very cut and dry. Things were simple. There wasn't a whole lot of excess or flash to be flashy; it was real flash, and real excitement.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Real
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Think about the physical act of pulling a trigger. The amount of pressure it takes to pull a trigger or the speed it takes to shove a sharp object into somebody. The psychology behind it. Why people kill? Why people don't kill?
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Thinking
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You have to have sympathy for the villain. Even the most disgusting ones, you have to find something to connect with. I try to put as much of myself in every single character that I play.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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Every job built my career in some way or made me grow as a person or I got to meet someone great. I had one line on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but I met Will Smith and he took 20 minutes out of his day to talk to the kid with one line. To this day, I think that guy is amazing because of that.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Jobs
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For me, what grabs my attention about the project is usually the character immediately and then the story, and then the people that are involved.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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It's an all-inclusive package, when you get to be creative and run a little country while you're on a set and doing it with people that you enjoy working with and you all have a say in it.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Running
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I try to find something in everyone that I play - even the most heinous ones. You have to find something that is real and vulnerable about everything that you play.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Real
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People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Character
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You've got this world, these pathologists that are, day in and day out, taking apart bodies, coming up with theories about how they died and how to better serve the community. At the same time these people have lives outside and families and my character in particular, he has a fiance and things are going well for him, so you've got to show that nice warm compassionate side at the same time you've got to show the steely, icy cool of a doctor. Not only that, but a doctor who gets a bit of a God complex and starts killing people for sport.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Sports
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Every single job I do. It sounds goofy but I did a music video for Fergie. I was in full on tattoos, ponytail, but it's like even things like that they help other people to see you in a different light. They give me opportunities. I try and change the image with every job that I can, it's just hard when you work on a TV show and you work so many months and trying to get away from that.
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Tattoo
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I saw so many kids 22, 19, with holes the size of a dime and they're dead. It's a gunshot and of course those kids thought they were as tough as nails, they never expected to be dead but they're gone. It's kinda nice to walk out of the County Coroner's Office with a couple of sayings, you know? "You're not so tough being dead on a morgue table."
- Milo Ventimiglia
Collection: Couple