Top 167 Quotes & Sayings by Alden Ehrenreich - Page 3

Basically, Beautiful Creatures was the first lead that I had since Tetro, and it was a lesson in seeing what it's like to film a movie that's of a much bigger scale. It was a good initiation.

But even a kid, directing was something that I did. I made short films in school. I feel like I've been in the best film school in the world.

Howard Hughes innovation was in the aviation field. His designs and spirit of experimentation was at the forefront. As far as his work as film producer, he certainly went after a bigger and more ambitious kind of filmmaking, even if he wasn't necessarily a cinema artist.

Warren [Beatty] was very adamant and very encouraging of me to direct. It's definitely something that I'd like to pursue more in the future.

It feels like you're being invited into a kind of community [working with the Coen brothers].

When Tetro came out, I met with Warren Beatty for the first time. I had, like, a four-and-a-half-hour lunch with him, and then over the next five years continued to meet with him and go to his house.

[The Yellow Birds] is based on a novel written by Kevin Powers, who is an Iraq War vet. I play a soldier who promises my friend's mother I'm going to keep him alive. But when we go overseas to Iraq, he gets killed. It's about what happened to him, my reckoning and dealing with that as I return home from the war.

The biggest challenge to being an actor is when you're not working, just being unemployed, the downtime and not having anything to do.

I had the opportunity to learn more about what life is like for a soldier [in The Yellow Birds].

I didn't read the script [ Rules Don't Apply ] for a couple years. It basically amounted to this kind of apprenticeship with Warren [Beatty]: conversations and learning about his whole background in the film industry and his life.

I grew up watching a lot of old movies, so getting to ask about making movies in the '70s and people he was friends with, like Orson Welles, Lillian Hellman and Charlie Chaplin, and hearing a first-person account was pretty incredible.

Elia Kazan - the films he made were such a big deal for me when I was growing up.

I met Scarlett [Johansson] briefly, but Josh [Brolin] and George [Clooney], in particular, were so welcoming and so inclusive and really brought me into the fold from the beginning. They were just very considerate of me, and it meant a lot [shootong Hail, Caesar!].

Warren [Beatty] did a very cool thing, where he directs in character.

[The Coen brothers] hire the same people over and over again, so there's a shorthand between all of the people they're working with.

When I was 14 years old, I was by no means trying to work professionally at all.

I think you always feel like you're about a hair's breadth away from being a bad actor anyway... It's not too hard to let the rope go slack, so to speak.

When you work for the Coens, they are so fun and so organized. They treat everyone with such respect. And the character I got to play was so fun.

Just getting to talk to that person [Woody Allen ] in real life was pretty wild.

I auditioned for four or five years and didn't get anything after that.

That was cool, because they've all [ George Clooney and Josh Brolin and Scarlett Johansson] worked with the Coens. They were much more at ease with them at the outset, and they were all kind of familiar with the shorthand that the Coens had.

Acting-wise, I've had all these experiences. Yet when I look at certain people whose careers I admire, they've gotten to play so many different characters. So it's just that - getting to have more of these singular little adventures where you get to be a part of a completely different world.

The movie [Blue Jasmin] shot very quick. I met Cate Blanchett in the car on the way to set, and we did that last scene, and she was just so phenomenal. I had basically met her that day. Because the way he shoots, everybody just shows up and does their thing, and he moves us very quickly.

I talked to Woody Allen for half an hour or something. It was pretty incredible. He really went into lots of detail about the story [in Blue Jasmin] and what actually happened. Just talking to him is very surreal.

[Woody Allen] does very few takes, and he doesn't give a whole ton of directions, although he does give direction.

I did my first film with Francis Ford Copploa which spoiled the hell out of me.

I feel like I would have ultimately ended up pursuing acting. It probably would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer for me to get into it professionally.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

That's something that Francis [Ford Coppola] would always say. I remember when I was doing Tetro, he said, "Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."

I'm trying to make myself sound better.

That's a lot more legitimate than the retail therapy I do.

I got turned down for a million jobs until I got my first movie with Francis [Ford Coppola].

I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have any real success until I was older and basically out of high school. I think that was a real confidence boost for me, having it all start that way, in that very privileged position of having him vouch for me.

I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off.

For me, each one of those experiences stands on its own. The first one was with Steven Spielberg, who helped me to get an agent and vouch for me, and that gave me the confidence to continue.

It's always been very important for me to be surrounded by people. It's never been enough for me to be successful alone. I want to be around people my own age who are also doing things I can learn from. And something Francis Ford Coppola said when we were doing the movie was, "If you learn something about people when you do dinner with them every week, you'll learn a lot more if you play softball with them every week." This is us learning what the climate is creatively among us.

I had one line. My two larger scenes had gone fine, and then on that day I screwed up that line over and over and over again. And every time I screwed it up, they can't use the whole thing because they're only using the one shot [in Blue Jasmin]. That was my last day.

I think that having had [Steven Spielberg's] confidence in me probably made me a little more immune to feeling as bad about myself in the face of rejection. I also was just so young - I was unaware enough to not take it too seriously.

I really feel lucky that I still feel excited about the actual work that I get to do. I just happen to love it, and I could easily see, for somebody else, that not being the case.

An era that I specifically like is sort of late 50's, early 60's. I guess mid 50's too. I like these types of films that deal with post WWII America and this more complex leading man that kind of emerges from that.

One of the big takeaways from that experience [in Blue Jasmin] was just what a thrill it was to act with somebody like Cate Blanchett operating on that caliber. Because what she was doing was very powerful. T

Their way of working [the Coen brothers] is always kept pretty mysterious. I was so curious to see how they make these movies. It was just such a joy - they seem to have so much fun making their movies.

I've definitely been spoilt. Every movie I've done, it's always the same criteria: finding a great story, and finding a great part to play.

Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

[ Woody Allen] persona in the films are so iconic; it's like on par with Groucho Marx or something like that.

There's a lot of complicated magical reasons why I'm not at the party that are too long and semantic to go into.