(On celebrities in politics)
"Celebrity is a big part of the American social system. I'm certainly grateful for what it's done for me, but I do think that celebrity is overdone in our society. I think it's got a dangerous side to it. I think that people should be paying a lot more attention to other issues, rather than who's the top 10 this or who's the sexiest or the most beautiful."
(On the California election)
"To me it's just ridiculous to have this recall vote. To let some right-wing guy with a lot of money step in there and try to unravel the democratic process is to me unthinkable."
"The big problem is when you start a scene in the sun and you are supposed to end the scene in the sun and there is no sunor it is supposed to be cloudy and it's not.'
"Directing my own films has made me more tolerant and patient. I've always been an extremely impatient actor you know, not too many takes, don't want to spend too much time on the set. Waiting around used to drive me nuts. Now I'm more understanding about the struggle to make a film."
‘It's part of growing up, of maturing. I remember when I arrived in New York from California.I was nineteen and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most actors did --meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor as you yourself hadn't shown up yet."
"I remember watching television and and resenting that I was watching it. I was annoyed because it was sucking me in and I couldn't resist watching it."
"You have to thank television for audiences having a short attention span. It's only because of what they are used to: not much subtlety, not much restraint, not much time to let things unfold, as often happens in life, and everything accelerated in a stylish way with a lot of zing."
"Television tells us only the things it wants to, It still feeds us heroes, it still offers villains. And even though we know better than to always watch it we still trust it."
"When I became successful, I put up a caution. I didn't think it was fair to have the shadow of that kind of success thrown on my family. And I was cautious about being taken by things that could destroy you."
"Part of me is drawn to the nature of sadness because I think life is sad and sadness is not something that should be avoided or denied. It's a fact of life, like contradictions are."
(On his daughters making her feature-film directorial debut with The Guitar)
"I'm here as her dad and to support her as a dad. I'm happy to say she's here on her own drive. I've encouraged my family to find their own path and follow it. She's here with her own work and I'm here to support her."
"I have no intentions of retiring or thinking about retiring. I find nothing more interesting these days than my work behind or in front of a camera.
"I love acting, directing and producing. I love my work with Sundance. When I'm not working, I love skiing, hiking and horseback riding."
"Someone in Ireland is apparently writing a biography on me, but I've not had any input and don't want to have any. I live in the present, not in the past. What I should do, and perhaps will do, is write stories based on my life."
"Do you mean in the roles I'm asked to play or in my personal life because I certainly don't find it difficult to find love and sex in real life. Which, I guess, is to say it shouldn't be the case in film either."
"There was a period in my life where I couldn't go where I wanted to. I had my stalkers in New York, Paris and Utah. I refused to have an entourage and bodyguards because I think that draws even more attention to you and it prevents you from having the kind of experiences that feed an actor and make him better."
"I don't want to win awards or be given some title. I want to be remembered for the work I've done in film and through Sundance. If I can have that, I'll be very grateful. To my family, I'd like to be remembered as a good father."
"To be crafty about it and go out in disguise. I moved out west so I could have an alternative life for myself and my kids."
(About Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid sequel)
"I made that film more than 30 years ago. A lot of water has gone under my bridge since then, but I can't go into a fundraiser without them playing the theme song as I walk in or as I walk out of the room. I can't count the number of times I've been asked to remake that film. Studios have also asked me to remake The Way We Were and The Sting, but never as many times as they've suggested Butch Cassidy."
(About Sundance Festival)
"We're better now than we were two or three years ago. We're getting better films. I wouldn't want to cut it back, but I don't want to get any bigger because that means more volume and volume threatens quality."
(About his film Spy Game)
"Because of what's happening in the world today, people have a tendency to pull our film into world events and that's not what the movie is about. Spy Game is about a relationship in a very different and dangerous world. Brad and my characters are playing a life game that requires them to drop their own identities for so long that they begin to lose sight of who they really are in favour of the cover lives they have adopted. What the film shows is that Brad's character is still young enough to change and to have real relationships. My guy is too old. He no longer knows who he really is."
(About working with Brad Pitt)
"In River I was his director. Now we're both actors. I love the difference it put into our relationship. On River we got pretty close, so we were able to carry that familiarity over into Spy Game. This new relationship proved interesting and fun for me."
"In Condor, I played an innocent victim who had to figure out what was going on in order to save his life. At that time I knew nothing about the CIA so I spent time with Richard Helm, the retiring director of the CIA. I learned a great deal from him. Here we are 25 years later and I'm essentially playing him because my character is on his way out as Helm was when we met."
"When you're young, you live with some resentment. As you grow older, it's all about how well or how poorly you've aged. There was always a lot of feeling within the industry that I had to break away from the looks thing if I wanted to be taken seriously. That was one of the reasons I formed my own production company."
"I was pretty ambivalent about being a movie star because my early focus was on being an artist and a stage actor.
"That all changed for me when I had to do the film version of Barefoot in the Park, which had been a big success for me on stage in New York. They wanted to turn me into a matinee idol after Barefoot. I was supposed to do a movie called Blue, but I backed out. The studio sued me and I couldn't work for a year. My first movie after that fiasco was Butch Cassidy, which proved to be an even bigger hit. I stopped fighting Hollywood and tried looking for really good material instead."
(About Jane Fonda)
"I recently saw Jane for the first time in 20 years. She came up to Sundance to attend a wedding. We didn't talk business, but I'd work with her again in a minute if she said she wanted to get back to work. I thought of her when I was casting Havana and The Horse Whisperer, but I heard both times she was in some kind of retirement."
"It seems everyone in Hollywood is getting pinched, lifted and pulled. I'm looking weird because I'm not, but it just doesn't feel right for me to get surgery. I feel this obsession with plastic surgery is like it's chipping away at oneself. I loved the way women in particular were allowed to age. Now, everyone wants to preserve their time in history. I guess I'll just have to look for other ways."
"I'm very attracted to diversity, to trying different things. The last picture I did (The Horse Whisperer) was a pretty heavy trip. It was a big picture about healing and the pain of getting to the healing point. When it was done, even though I enjoyed a lot about making it, I thought the next thing I would do would go in a new direction."
(About The Legend Of Bagger Vance)
"See, I knew there would be surprise here because of Will being such a charismatic, outgoing character and having been in a certain kind of film. An audience, or a following he has, is going to expect certain things and we won't disappoint them on that front because he is still Will Smith. He is still entertaining and fun and charismatic. For me, it was not so much a matter of cutting him back as going somewhere new and adding another dimension of silence. It just hasn't been in his lexicon of work before."
"I think it's because, as an actor, I like to get involved in a scene and I don't like to have to think about anything else."
"I'm not afraid of aging and I refuse to do anything drastic to deny the process. My face is meant to age along with my body."
"They reviewed my appearance. They said I looked older and craggier. It's what happens to people. I was angry for a while. I've forgotten about it now but it shows that America is obsessed with youth and cosmetics."
"Everything that accompanies aging. I was always athletic. I like being physical. I like to ski, swim and ride horses. When I can't do those things, life will get a bit tricky."
"To me, The Horse Whisperer is a story about the real American West. This is the physical and emotional place where I live."
"My heart is in the West. Hollywood has given us far too many mythologized and romanticized versions of the West. I wanted to counter this oversimplification."
"Many ranches in America have adopted a new mechanical way to brand cattle. It's not the way we do it in Montana. Our way is pure. It's the way cowboys branded their cattle."
"I was raised in the West (Santa Monica, California). I came from a poor family so I learned to enjoy nature because it was more accessible. At an early age I learned to love the outdoors and it's something I never lost."
"I wanted to be a painter. I felt travelling was a way to observe the works of the masters."
"It is directing that has finally allowed me to bring the acting and painting together. I direct with a painter's eye."
"It always made me nervous that so much attention was placed on my looks because I knew how dangerous it was to my growth as an actor. Physical beauty is a great seducer because it cannot last. The respect I have gained as a filmmaker these past two decades compensates for all the frivolous talk of icon and celebrity."
"What interests me as a filmmaker is that family is such a mineable terrain. It is an endlessly fascinating topic."
"I was born in the west and I came to live in the west and I raised my family in New York and later in Utah. I know the experiences of both places. I spent some time in nature, enough time to know the land. And I've worked the land and I understand the people who live on it."
"I like using my own life experiences and wisdom and I like bringing it to the screen. I think that if I make a personal movie, I make a movie that has more weight to it than somebody who grew up looking at movies all their lives and making movies about movies."
"Sometimes literature raises the black-and-white issues but the reality is that much of life is grey and it's the grey area that interests me most, because that's how we live most of our lives."
"I've always said that ever since I started directing I didn't want to do both, because I'm a certain kind of director and actor, and I've always assumed that because of the ego and vanity involved in acting I wouldn't be able to look at myself in a calculating way."
"The landscape is important, and the camera lens changes as they move west. And so does the color as spring moves to summer, and we discover more about the characters as they discover more about themselves."
(About Paul Newman's death)
"The fact is we can all be really sad here and I am sad. I've lost a really good friend but the fact is that the person he was, the person he is, cause he's going to be lasting, has got to do with the way he lived his life, the commitments he made and what he put back."
"As an actor and as a person you come together with being in familiar territory although that has not been my whole life. That's been a part of it. I think a lot of people associate me with the west because of Sundance."
"Golf has become so manicured, so perfect. The greens, the fairways. I don't like golf carts. I like walking. Some clubs won't let you in unless you have a caddy and a cart."
"Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better."
"I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way."
"I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that."
"I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book."
"I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did, meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet."
"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? "
"It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter."
"What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story."
"You can't completely control the sport - Tiger Woods comes close. The test is against yourself and nature's own way. I find golf a particularly good metaphor for this story."
"I have to be human, of course, to be flattered by attention from the public. How could you not be? But it gets pretty intense when people are going after your clothes, and mobbing you in the streets, and you have to hide. That's kind of amusing, and kind of mind-boggling when it happens - you kind of go with it and have fun with it. Then it gets tiring, and then it gets worse when you realize you're being robbed of a vital part of your life, which is your privacy. And you also know what's coming your way is artificial, because those people are reacting to something they saw on the screen, not you as a person."
"They throw that word "star" at you loosely, and they take it away equally loosely. You take the responsibility for their crappy movie, that's what that means."
"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"
"I often feel I`ll just opt out of this rat race and buy another hunk of Utah."
[on his friendship with Paul Newman]
"There are certain friendships that are sometimes too good and too strong to talk about."
"I got a review when I was starting in live television. This guy Jack O`Brian called me "hammy and overwrought". Now I`m looking back on it, I`d like to hold on to those reviews. It keeps you in perspective. It really does. Part of you says, "You know, I never ever really got over that." And what I think you learn very early on is not to believe your own press clippings, one way or another, just do your work. Because you`re your own tough critic. If you focus on doing the work, you`ll get to a place of refinement where those reviews which are often hyped up too much to the negative or the positive fall away."
[on working with Dustin Hoffman on "All the President`s Men"]
"One of the joys of the movie was working with Dustin; he has one of the most wonderful acting minds I`ve ever worked with."
[on his appearance in Havana]
"All everyone talked about was aging. It took me by surprise because I have not thought of myself that way. I assumed I would age naturally, as time went on."
"I learned early that you`d better know what you`re talking about. You`d better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you`re going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint."
[on his relationship with Paul Newman]
"When we made the movies nobody used the word "chemistry". Nobody used the word "bonding". It was just: "Get up there and do your job!"
"Some people have analysis. I have Utah."
"You should prepare when you go to a public event to be public. That`s when I will sign autographs. But not when you`re going about your normal business."
[during his opening-night address at the Sundance Film Festival, claiming U.S. politicians exploited public support of invasions] "We put all our concerns on hold to let the leaders lead. I think we`re owed a big, massive apology."
[1972 comment on Paul Newman]
"Paul is the most generous man with whom I`ve ever worked. We had a fantastic rapport shooting "Butch Cassidy." It was one of the happiest experiences of my life."
[on refusing the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967)]
"I never did look like a 21-year-old just out of college who`d never been laid."
"I`ve bought hundreds of acres around my home. That`s why I moved here from the coast. There`s plenty of room to roam and be alone with nature. That`s living. The city life is merely existing."
"A lot of what acting is, is paying attention."
"All my life I`ve been dogged by guilt because I feel there is this difference between the way I look and the way I feel inside."
"I am perhaps the best-looking grandfather around, apart from Marlon Brando, of course!"
"As a director, I wouldn`t like me as an actor. As an actor, I wouldn`t like me as a director."
"If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes."
(asked if he has any fears)
"I'm probably not afraid of the things you might think. I'm not going to go into a personal thing here, but I'm afraid of certain types of people who are not straight, who have an agenda other than the one they are talking about; and the agenda they have is highly immoral, maybe even criminal, but is disguised as a performance and you have to work hard to figure it out. If you can't figure it out, when you can't figure it out, you sense it's there--and it's frightening. I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm not afraid of the unknown. I'm attracted to the unknown. I don't want to be a prisoner of what is known, so I like not knowing certain things. I like mystery. I'm frightened sometimes by my children [laughs] They scare me to death because they've become the children I wanted them to be independent and their independence sometimes scares me. They take chances and so, as a parent, that frightens me. I get frightened by forces that take things in my world, my life or my country that are beyond my control. They take it down a dark path, which is what I feel is happening now, and I have no ability to have a voice in it, well, maybe a little voice, but it doesn't mean much. When I can see something that I value highly being taken down a destructive road because of either ignorance or lack of experience or limitations or over-exercised ideology, it frightens me because I know they don't get it and they are not likely to change. That's frightening particularly when you can see the results are. So, right now I'm frightened for my country."
(about Morgan Freeman)
"I just think that Morgan has something about him that is very soulful; it has to do with the way he looks, it has to do with his skill as an actor and the depth of his life experience and his career and you put it all together and you have a man that emits a great deal of soul in his work and I think that's the reason."
(about forgiveness)
"This is just one small example, there are others, but I don't want to waste time here thinking. There was a critic that I became friendly with early in life and I always wondered if that was dangerous to have a friendship with a critic, because what would happen if that critic were to review your films? I thought about it and worried about it, but didn't do anything about it. Then later on, the critic began to review my films and I thought that would not be a good idea and I told him: "Don't you think it's not such a good idea? That it would be a conflict?" And he said, "No, no problem at all." And then he and I had a falling out as friends, and from that time I got savaged in reviews. The abuse was so great, I mean, it was so extreme, his punishing me in print. I had no defense so I had to forgive it and I eventually did."
(about Jennifer Lopez)
'We were in Canada in a very remote place and were working there as actors. She was just Jennifer. We were playing parts in a movie and she didn't bring with her any of the business stuff. It didn't enter the picture, so I never thought about it. I never dealt with it. She's a talented actor, so I just enjoyed her, but I never thought about her audience or anything like that."
"Years ago, I was making a film called Jeremiah Johnson, and the scene called for me to be chased by a bear and the scene got out of hand and the camera had a malfunction and I had to keep running around a tree. The bear got all excited and started really chasing me and I had to jump in the tree to save my neck. I made it, but I said, "I'm never going to do this again." So, now I'm doing it again and why am I doing it again? Because I got paid to do it."
(about Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom)
"Lasse brings to the film his own sensibility, which has a very definite style and rhythm to it. I like a lot of his films and I liked them because he allows a film to breathe and develop in its own natural way and I think films like that, at least for me, have become more and more appealing as the industry has moved towards fast-paced, in-your-face, high-velocity films. They have a lot of cutting and fancy tricks with the camera. The way the film business has moved more and more towards the effects of high technology, animation, commercials and music videos, all of those elements have affected the movie-making business and so the films that give you a little bit more time to feel things and digest things have sort of been pushed a little to the side; I am drawn to filmmakers who still have the courage to make those kinds of films. Lasse does and has a European sensibility, which means that he has a very strong attachment to the humanistic side."
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The Quotable Robert Redford
Robert Redford Quotes
