Jeremy Piven Quotes - Page 2

You can't make people who you want them to be. That was a hard lesson for me.

For so much of my career I've been trying to find little things and make something out of it.

I wrote a script and I've been whispering in director's ears for a really long time and I'd love to direct.

I have been drumming my whole life.

I've been on the stage my entire life as an actor.

Sometimes in life, we have to continue to learn the same lesson until it sticks.

If you are an incredibly reactive person and you are working on your lowest level, and if you continuously give into your dark side and are angry, and screaming, and breaking things, and you do that for hours and hours on end, you are going to be incredibly exhausted. That's just the way life is.

I'm one of these people who would rather show you than tell you through the performance.

I had never really been around cards.

HBO does something that most networks don't do which is give a show a chance to find their voice.

I don't know if there's a lot of patience anymore. I think that could serve a lot of people.

I'm in the middle of just trying to impress my nieces, who think I work for the bus company because they saw a picture of me on a bus. I did an independent movie with Mark Pellington (I Melt with You), and then tried to impress my nieces again, by starring opposite Miley Cyrus (in So Undercover). So, basically I'm just trying to get some respect from my family.

For the record, if you're not a stage actor, climbing onto Broadway and tackling something like David Mamet is not an easy thing to do.

I think people are gravitating towards these period dramas because I think they're looking for a simpler time.

I do yoga. I've been doing yoga for over 20 years and I love it.

When you do a television show in the States, you get the pilot, and then it's the great unknown. That's the way it is. It's this great leap of faith. It's the Russian roulette of art.

When you play a character with power and energy, people lock into that and go, "Oh, this must be the guy."

I grew up watching PBS and wanting to be a part of it, just like HBO.

Robert Rodriguez is a genius, and I'm a huge fan of his.

There are so many great directors that I haven't worked with and that I would love to work with.

I come from a theater family and a theater background, and I come from a philosophy that you respect the space you occupy when you work and you put everything that you have into something.

I like to box. It's a great release.

I grew up on the stage, where you just throw yourself into projects and don't get in your own way.

I was in a play directed by my father, and I was doing a fight scene, and the choreography went haywire, and I flew backward over a chair and ripped my thumb all the way to my wrist and had to have surgery to sew up all the tendons in there.

I'm just a stage actor from Chicago.