Matthew Lillard Quotes - Page 2

I like the fact that a modern television and modern drama on cable has characters that are really intricate and deep and have multiple layers.

Being an actor, when you sign onto a project - whether it's good, bad, or indifferent - you kind of fall in love with it. You fall in love with the experience, you fall in love with the memories.

As a kid, as a young actor, I really wanted to pop. I wanted to create something different. I wanted to be Sean Penn, but I didn't have all the words to be Sean Penn. But I was trying to do something different in every role.

Every kid's dream is to be a great actor.

You become funny for a reason. I became an actor because that's who I was, nothing else - it was the only thing I was good at. You become a clown and you make people laugh because a) it protects you from everything, and b) it's this validating force in your life. And when you're 12 and 13 years old, you need validation and you're lost and you're kind of floating and you suffer from a severe learning disability and you're overweight and you have glasses... you become funny for a reason.

For better or worse, I take my acting seriously. I may not have been in the best movies ever made, but I take it deathly serious, and I love being an actor.

The older I get, the more I can't stand violence and have a hard time with seeing people die in horrific ways. It gets harder and harder to watch and deal with that stuff.

The great thing about acting is the longer you do it, the more you realize that all those realities are inside you. No matter how crazy they are, you can pretend that they are a part of you. The great thing about this job is you get to play with every aspect of your id and who you are.

I fired a bunch of people and kind of went back to my roots. I fired my agent - I had this big, fancy agent and a big fancy manager and a big fancy lawyer - and I went back to my first agent and said, "I want to go back to just being an actor."

I've always been a guy that doesn't do well waiting for people to say, "You can act." It's always been a part of me.

The stage is a training ground and it's where you learn what's funny and what's successful.

My tone and my style are reflected in the movies I choose to make. I want to make big movies. My dream is to be Jon Favreau or Ben Affleck.

I'm not a broad comedy guy. I've been funny in movies, but I'm not a comedian. I'm an actor who's sometimes funny.

I've really enjoyed the independent film world. I've had a blast. But, the reality is that I really want to make bigger movies. If I could make movies that carry great characters and great performances and great pathos, and can have an explosion or two, that would be fine with me.

When you're making an independent film what you don't have in time and money you have to make up with creativity and diligence.

Something like 'Without a Paddle' does really well at the box office and I'm like, 'Oh, here we go.' In 'Without a Paddle' I'm the romantic lead - great! A comedy and that's what America wants. Then it did nothing for me and I went into kind-of a work abyss. I just didn't get another shot.

So much of Hollywood is about who the people you work with are.

Now, more then ever, we have the ability to make films for almost nothing and that's broken down all barriers of entry. I think it's a new golden age of film-making. With that, there needs to be the ability to recoup investment dollars, people need to make money.

I got into a bad jag of movies that helped pay the rent and I thought would help further me along.