Clint Eastwood Quotes - Page 14

The craving for information is so huge now, and it can be marketed at such a rapid rate.

Scott Eastwood always came in and did a good job. And he's now graduated to better roles, and the chicks are all calling and asking where Scott is. They used to ask where I was. Now they're going, "What about Scott?"

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

If you're doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don't know what was going on in the person's mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

It's hard to tell what will stimulate curiosity nowadays because looking at some of the things that do excite people, you kind of go, "Ohh, OK. So this hasn't a chance." But we made it anyway. I think if people see the picture, they'll find a lot of parallels to today, ever since 9/11 and everything, that kind of fear that's going on in disturbance of the country.

Actors know what actors are insecure about - and they're all insecure.

I think the only way it has influenced me is to cause me to try to branch out and do other things. So that people will know that I am reaching out and trying to be a little more versatile. So they realize he is not a "Dirty Harry." He doesn't advocate martial law or mayhem -it's a character.

You have to go with your instincts. I remember when I was about to make "Fistful of Dollars" a big article came out that said, "Italian Westerns are finished." I said, "Swell." Then, of course, the film came out, and it did something. I'm so glad for the dozens of times I haven't listened along the way.

As you get older, you change certain things.

Acting is an animal thing, not an intellectual thing.

I think as you get older, you find you can play more things because you're moving to a different category. You play a certain thing as a younger man, playing action roles like I did. Then I moved out, and I kept trying to do different things all the time.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best.

I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me. The horse is out of the barn... In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don't try to play younger than I really am.

The only reason I ever thought about retiring from the front part of the camera as opposed to the back is sometimes you think, "How many roles are there for someone my age?"

The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

Hitchcock used to believe that if there were three or four memorable scenes in a film that would be enough to drive it, but I don't know if that's true or not.

Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

I don't write. I usually look for material by other people. Sometimes I change things or adapt things but I don't write from scratch. I wish I had that ability.

[ J. Edgar]Hoover, I'm sure, felt that he was right in everything he did and even the things that we don't like about his character.

I'd say, go ahead, shoot your shot. More power to ya if you can come up with a different angle on the character.

If the director's a communist, whatever, he's a communist. All I care is that he directs. For the actor, the same thing. All you really care is that he comes in and performs.

I've never been on a movie where they play five-dollar Friday. I must not be very observant.

There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

Historically, actors have been made very famous for roles that were something that was far - - Richard Widmark comes to mind (playing Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death") or something like that, where you do some famous role and everybody imitates you for the rest of your life. But obviously it's much more fun to play something you're not than it is to play something you are.