Kevin Spacey Quotes - Page 5

Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

London is a very energising place to be.

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

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 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.

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

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

Look, I might have lived in England for the last several years but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

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.

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.

Netflix did it right and focused on all the things that have replaced the dumb, raw numbers of the Nielsen world - they embraced targeted marketing and 'brand' as a virtue higher than ratings.

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

And I certainly won't lay out areas of my life that I think are just private.

The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty.

I went through a period of great rebellion within my family, when I was about 9 or 10. I was mad, I had no focus, had no real interest in anything, and so I started to do things that were just rebellious and stupid.

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.

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.