Philip Seymour Hoffman
To be fair to my dad, he is one of the brightest men I've ever met.
I've worked with a lot of characters that are unhinged. I've played characters that are unhinged. That's, like, my job.
When people don't know who you are, they're seeing your work for the first time. But if they've seen a lot, getting certain things across is a more difficult.
To act well isn't an easy thing.
Yeah, writers do hate writing.
Actors are investigators.
The idea that you have a vision of what you're supposed to be, or going to be, or where your kids are going to be - and that that doesn't work out - is always going to be something that's going to affect people and move people.
I think part of being an actor is staying private.
The ambition, the drive, the wanting to be the center of attention, the wanting to succeed... They're all inside me somewhere.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.Collection: Motivational
Don't let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they're bored and step on you when they're done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.Collection: People
Great talent admits shortcomings.Collection: Talent
There's something in the very small minutia of life that tells us something about the big, big picture that we see every day all over the place, and so I think the more specific and creative and revelatory you are in the micro, the more powerful the macro will be.Collection: Powerful
Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.Collection: Teacher
To be loved, I think, is the thing that gets you up in the morning.Collection: Morning
You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.Collection: Inspirational
I'm probably more personal when I'm acting than at any other time. More open, more direct. Because it allows me to be something that I can't always feel comfortable with when I'm living my own life, you know? Because it's make-believe.Collection: Believe
Learning how to die is therefore learning how to live.Collection: Dies
I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.Collection: Honesty
Actors are responsible to the people we play. I don't label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can.Collection: Play
Something that could bring you wealth and fame could also be your end, your undoing.Collection: Wealth
I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.Collection: Drinking
You have all the influence you choose to have.Collection: Destiny
I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.Collection: Reading
My mother's a staunch feminist, so I grew up with very strong feminist messages. As a result, I battled her in my teenage years because my image of being a man was a deformed one.Collection: Strong
I know that obviously, that if you want to get the story, if you want to get close to somebody, if you want to find out what is really the truth or what's really interesting, you have to create a trust between these two things, between the journalist and the subject.Collection: Two
I always knew where I needed to go but I sometimes had a problem getting there, so I had to work harder at it. Once in a while I'd wanna take off the blouse and heels because I'd get that "I just wanna be a guy" feeling I had when growing up.Collection: Growing Up
Acting's difficult for me because I think you have to be passionately involved in what you're doing.Collection: Thinking
If all people are encouraged to actually see who they're coexisting with, or even if they're not coexisting with other people.It's like to look at the world you're in.Collection: People
If I'm directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I'm acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that's come about because there's projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.Collection: Interesting
When you're acting, you're subjective; when you're a director, you're more objective.You're kind of watching from the outside and helping others, and therefore I learn my mistakes through others, and also my assets through others.Collection: Mistake
Frankly, I get much more sensitive about what's written about me than how I look in a photo. I'm so used to people seeing my image in plays and films that what they think about how I look is none of my business. If they says, "Hey, he doesn't look good," I'm like, Whatever, because I know I look different from day to day. But if you're up there putting your heart into something and people reject your performance, that's very painful. The written word can kick your ass.Collection: Heart
You have to have a personal connection. You have to really want to do it, because if you don't, investing yourself personally, your thoughts, your emotions, yourself into a part, is something you're not going to want to do as much.Collection: Connections
When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate.Collection: Burden
I have three children and I think I'm happy when I'm with them and they're okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness.Collection: Children
Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.Collection: Kids
The film is made in the editing room.Collection: Editing
Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I'm doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative.Collection: Thinking
I was probably finding my feet more than anybody. I really have to say I was more obsessed with myself faltering than anybody else.Collection: Feet
A self-awareness moment. All of a sudden everything he has done comes flashing into his mind, a self-criticism that is unbearable.Collection: Self
If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft.Collection: Practice
I don't know, I was young, I drank too much, you know, so I stopped. You know what I mean, it's not really complicated. I had no interest in drinking in moderation. And I still don't. Just because all that time's passed doesn't mean maybe it was just a phase. That's you know, that's who I am.Collection: Drinking
I was a breed of people who aren't capable of doing anything, really. At college I began to get the idea that being macho wasn't the accepted norm in the liberal world, and especially the world I entered into, which was the artistic world. I had a lot of problems with that because I was struggling with the need to be proud of being a man, which wasn't something I was feeling.Collection: Struggle
When you think about [Truman] Capote in the - was what he did exploitative of a person's life or exploitative of these murders? You look at our culture now, you look at celebrity and how it plays out in our culture now, and Capote was one of the great PR men of his time.Collection: Men
I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.Collection: New York
A lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.Collection: Cute
Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.Collection: Done
My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.Collection: Fashion
My mum's name is Marilyn O'Connor. She's here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.Collection: Congratulations