Kevin spacey quotes

For kids growing up now, there's no difference watching 'Avatar' on an iPad or watching YouTube on TV or watching 'Game of Thrones' on their computer. It's all content. It's just story.

If you have done well in whatever business you are in, it is your duty to send the elevator back down and try to help bring up the next generation of undiscovered talent.

Theres no doubt that some of the greatest films ever made have come from the theater. Its all a matter of finding a way to make the theater experience watchable on film.

I don't know who Keyser Soze is, but whoever he is, he is going to get gloriously drunk tonight.

It's the way I feel about acting. That we are given clues by a writer about someone's essence or persona and it's our job to try to figure out which of those clues are true, which of clues we decide to follow and which of those clues we think are red herrings, or only in the way another character thinks of that character.

My job is to interpret. I'm an interpreter. I can add things and bring unique qualities to the role that the writer may not have thought of, but someone else created the fundamental idea.

Pushing the boundaries of what is expected of you is important to me.

I suppose the most important thing is to stay interested. It's very easy in life if you get to a place where you're successful to hit the same groove on the record player over and over again because it's safe.

I have never played a game in my life.

Over the years, I've been trying to build a relationship with an audience. I've tried to maintain as much of a low profile as I could so that those characters would emerge and their relationship with audiences would be protected.

I'm aware that, from the outside, this looks like I've got quite an ego.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasnt good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

Meeting the person you are going to be playing is very unique.

Theatre is alive and it is now, and then it's gone.

You can't win a marathon without putting some bandaids on your nipples!

Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

You have to always be ready, always be alive, and always be willing to move in a new direction.

The audience, the place youre in, has everything to do with how your performance goes.

For me, coming to work every day has turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be.

If I'm sick of me, I can only imagine how other people feel.

Sometimes I'll be flipping through the channels and I'll see a movie I'm in. And I'll probably stop and think, 'Sure, I'll watch this.'

You are not just, "This is the way I play it every night." You are constantly finding new ways in, new attacks, "I want to try it this way. Maybe this scene is affecting that scene. I want to attack this scene differently."

The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.

Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again and again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.

Am I now supposed to go on Oprah and cry and tell you my deepest, darkest secrets because you want to know?

It's not even about being negative. It's just being unsettled, unsatisfied, unfinished.

The journey that we go on as actors is an interesting one and sometimes a revealing one.

I never doubted at all. If you ever doubt then you are in trouble. I never thought: 'I should do this or that in case I don't make it.' I never had a back-up plan.

I can't judge the characters I play, because it's for the audience to do. What I can try to do is to understand and embody what were they going through? How did they make the decisions they made? That to me is a more interesting way to approach something, rather than saying this person is a villain and that person is this and - because it's not very interesting to play that anyway.

No one’s personal life is in the public interest. It’s gossip, bottom line. End of story.

While data can only tell you what has happened in the past, it can in some ways give you a sense of what might be of interest to an audience in the future.

I open myself up every time I walk on screen and give you everything that I am. There are parts of me that are in every movie that I've done. That to me is what my job is.

If youre not concerned about maintaining an image, you can pursue roads that another actor might not take.

Sometimes you walk away from playing somebody and you think, "Wow that was far as from my own experience as I can possibly be." And sometimes you walk away thinking, "Wow. There are qualities in that character that I didn't realize I had." And those can be both interesting and uncomfortable.

To me, getting up every single night and trying to reach out to an audience, and trying to dig deeper and further in the play to serve the writer and to understand yourself in that context is how you continue to grow and learn.

I can't imagine that anyone in Hollywood is sitting around trying to decide what actor is good or right or qualified for a role and is being denied a role because of their political views. I don't think that's the way Hollywood works. We're not living in an era of blacklisting.

I'm not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I'm living any kind of a life. I'm actually trying to convince people: I don't want you to know what I'm living, because it's none of your business.

The movies are not my first priority - the theater is.

I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me.

Secret Cinema has created a new way of experiencing film. The fusion of film and theatre allows for a much more powerful experience and adds an incredibly unique dimension for the audience. It certainly did for me. I was blown away

I have long been a supporter of The Princes Trust, and so when American Express asked me to launch Amex Be Inspired and help young people build their confidence and fulfil their potential, I was delighted to get involved.

People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.

To know what you want, to understand why you're doing it, to dedicate every breath in your body to achieve... If you feel you have something to give, if you feel that your particular talent is worth developing, is worth caring for then there's nothing you can`t achieve.

I often make the analogy with tennis. Every match the rules are the same, but no game is ever the same. Theatre is like that. Every time is different.

For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans.

You can't turn a "no" to a "yes" without a "maybe" in between.

Stay true to your brand and true to your voice and audiences will respond to that authenticity with enthusiasm and passion.

It's Hard to Stay Mad When There's So Much Beauty in the World

I terribly miss - we all miss, I think - somebody like the great producer Irving Thalberg. He had a foot in both camps: He understood us creative people. And he understood the money people.

Storytelling helps us understand each other, translate the issues of our times, and the tools of theater and film can be powerful in helping young people to develop communication/collaboration skills, let alone improving their own confidence.

Fortunately for me, I don't come from the school where you only measure success by how much money something makes or whether it has a big box-office weekend. I measure it by how much people actually participate in the process.

In film, movies schedules are based on three things: actors availabilities, when are sets being built, when you can rent the place youre going to film in.

Let's let people live their lives and do it the way they want to do it.

It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.

If it were not for people who stepped forward and gave me opportunities at a time when I had not proved myself at all, believe me, I would not have a career.

I always thought that, in a way, you want your Superman to be a total unknown.

Theatre is organic, film is not. Theatre you come every day and you work with a group of people and you're are all up for it and you all get to do the whole thing every night, be it two hours or three hours. In film you work in two or three minute bits and it's never in chronological order and then someone takes that away and makes it look like it all happened, or that you gave that performance.

It is not about whether you are an executive, a studio or a network. If you have a story or an idea you can build a following for it.

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

Its the details and the human element that makes Recount entertaining. Even though we know how the election ends, it plays like a thriller. Its also funny.

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions youd rather not know the answers to.

There's something very interesting about the way each individual actor approaches stuff.

We have learned the lesson that the music industry didn't learn. Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price - and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.

It's much more interesting when you go to different places - make a left turn when nobody expects you to make a left turn, and make a right when nobody expects you to do that.

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get.

A man can convince anyone hes someone else but never himself.

My job as an actor is to serve the writing and help the author get his ideas across.

If you ignore the murdering and the conniving, Francis Underwood is an effective politician.

I think you need the failures to get the success. You learn more from that.

You must find a way to express your ideas and compel your audience to react through the idea itself, and then figuring out what the best representative of that idea may be, and bringing it to life.

Talent is only interesting if it's challenged.

The only thing worse than a loser is someone who won't admit he played badly.

I'm supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I'm somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you've got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I'm somebody else?

While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a childs imagination.

I'm not someone who's led my life trying to get publicity; I'd rather do my work and go home.

If there is one thing I object to, its actors talking about how tough their jobs are.

Studios and networks who ignore either shift - whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement - will be left behind.

At the end of the day, storytelling is actually very simple in its origin as long as there are people who want to tell stories and there are people who want to hear them.

Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of 'House of Cards' at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they've been doing on 'House of Cards' and lots of other shows, we should let them binge.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us believe that he's not real.

Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention.

London is a very energising place to be.

Fundamentally, I like to accomplish things.

There are two things that have been happening over the last few decades in my opinion. First, there have been unbelievable, remarkable, pioneering advances in technology and, second, an equal amount of evolution in creativity. These two shifts are meeting at an intersection.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

Our job, you know, in the entertainment profession is to try to illuminate and show people all sides of humanity, and it doesn't just mean that you can only do movies that are only about the good parts of us. You have to be able to eliminate the bad parts.

There are ways in which you can make sure that even if people come to the theatre because they know an actor or actress, by the end, theyve forgotten that, and they leave going, Wow - what an amazing play.

We're all victims of our own hubris at times.

The story is everything, which means it's our job to tell better stories.

The less you know about me the easier it is to convince you that I'm the character on screen.

If you wanna compete, youve got to get into the original content game.

If you haven't turned rebel by twenty you've got no heart; if you haven't turned establishment by thirty you've got no brains!

I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people's shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be - to not try to look at the world in a sense of "I'm not going to judge somebody. I'm going to try to understand who they are and what they're about."

Anyone with a internet connection and an idea can develop an audience

To look in the eyes of audiences and see the kind of naughty glee that they got with being on the inside, the audience becomes your co-conspirators.

My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell.

Talent is one thing, it is how you nurture and develop it, and never walk away from it. You can be rich, successful, you win awards, but it can always be better.

As the years have gone on, I find one of the dangers of watching dailies... is you fall in love with moments.

The audience has spoken. They want stories. They’re dying for them. They’re rooting for us to give the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly GIFs, and god knows what else about it..

If you're lucky enough to have done well, then it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down.

I like being able to go to a local pub and have great food and particularly love pubs that welcome my dogs.

When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.

I find it sad that by not talking about who I sleep with, that makes me mysterious. There was a time when I would have been called a gentleman.

The process of doing a play is an organic one and the process of doing a film is totally un-organic.

No one should ever feel sorry for me. Ive been treated very well for the most part.

I'm lucky if I find one movie a year that's worth doing, and when I do find one, it usually only takes 20-30 days to shoot.

I accept the fact that some things dont go the way you hope.

I always remember is that no matter how good I might be in a movie, I'll never be any better. It's frozen. But in theatre I can be better tomorrow night, I can be better the night after that and I can be better in a week. The journey you go through as an actor is incredible.

One can never take the cynicism one comes across in life too seriously.

I feel it's a responsibility for anyone who breaks through a certain ceiling... to send the elevator back down and give others a helpful lift.

You learn every single day when youre running a company. You learn as you go.

Sometimes its the crazy people who turn out to be not so crazy.

I have talked to more people who are in politics who have said to me, "[House of Cards] is closer than you can imagine. It's the most accurate description of how politics actually works that we've ever seen." I mean, West Wing - beautiful, wonderful idea of how democracy should work. But I've had more people in politics say they think House of Cards is closer. I - don't know whether to take that as a compliment or a sad state of affairs.

When I was young, I learned very early on that I could make my mother laugh. And that was one of the greatest sounds I ever heard.

I'm a relatively ugly character who's done pretty damn well in film.

Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.

I am not an image. I am a human being.

[What's my favourite book?] It changes all the time.

Im always taken aback by things that are successful that I think are just crap, and then Im completely surprised when things I do end up being successful because you walk into things and you never know Its just really remarkable.

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.

[Washington, DC] feels like you're watching performance art. A lot of the time. I don't believe them, I don't believe what they say, I don't think they're being absolutely sincere. I think it's performance art. And most of them are bad actors.

There are times when you do a play when you are living in the character over a two-and-a-half-hour period or longer, and you come to the end of the night, and you can feel like you were hit by a truck.

The greatest sound in the theater is silence.

Its a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition.

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.