Top 186 Quotes & Sayings by Alec Baldwin - Page 2

There are shows that are monolithic successes on TV that nobody in the business ever watches one episode of.

In the film business, when you're young, you just want to work. But when you're older, it has more to do with who's involved with the project - who you're going to get in the boat with.

I'm not an awards-driven person in anything. Anytime you do get caught up in that, you usually end up getting whacked.

On a television show, precise acting isn't the order of the day.

I had a marriage that I came to in the same way everybody else comes to a marriage. We all take chances when we get married.

I'm a pretty loyal person.

I have my older daughter Ireland and my wife Hilaria, and I have Carmen and Rafael.

A lot of people want to not wear a tie when they go to a restaurant. They feel they don't have to wear a tie. I think it's kind of a statement they're making. I don't know what that statement is. I haven't quite figured that out yet.

I started out as an actor, where you seek to understand yourself using the words of great writers and collaborating with other creative people. Then I slid into show business, where you seek only an audience's approval whether you deserve it or not.

I want to go make a movie and be very present for that and give it everything I have, and after we're done, then the rest of the time is mine.

Being able to stay home with my children is what I prefer.

John McTiernan, the director, is not Ingmar Bergman. He does action-adventure movies.

There are some times when you make films and you travel places, and the take that people in the business have is that the worst way to see a city is to shoot there, because you work these long 12, 13 and 14-hour days, and you go home to the hotel, you eat, and you pass out.

I just can't live in New York anymore.

I worked all the time. Every moment I wasn't working, I was home with my family. I got divorced. And now I'm doing it all over again, and I've learned that the key is, I've got to work less.

When I told my parents, 'I'm going to be an actor,' they screamed and wept and freaked out.

I'm going to stop giving too much money to charity - the charity is going to become my family. I'm only half-kidding.

I've had a relatively charmed life. I loved to be out in the city. New York was my town. I've had people come up to me and say, 'You're a great New Yorker. You've given your time and money to so many New York charities. You're a great supporter of the arts. I like some of your movies - and some of your movies suck, actually.'

I want my weekends back so I can be with my kids.

I don't think acting is addictive. If I stopped acting tomorrow, I really wouldn't care. If you told me that I would have to sell real estate in New York City to look after my family, that would be fine with me.

Hollywood does draw some very strange characters, and then the power of Hollywood and what they can do with it becomes like a blood sport to them.

I don't hate Trump, but he's not somebody I admire.

I hope people will learn more about agriculture in America. About locally grown farming and about water conservation. About how much pollution results from beef and pig farming.

When I'm not working, I dress like a surfer. I look like I'm going to come into your house and clean your pool.

I haven't changed, but public life has. It used to be you'd go into a restaurant, and the owner would say, 'Do you mind if I take a picture of you and put it on my wall?' Sweet and simple. Now, everyone has a camera in their pocket.

There's three things: there's masculinity, there's intelligence, there's sensitivity. You've got to bring those three things to a leading man's role: masculinity, sensitivity, intelligence. In some people, there's a little too much in the mix of one or the other.

When you lack a certain vitality in the film business, there's no hiding it. It's like you've had your limb chopped off. How do you hide the fact that you're missing an arm?

I was in college in Washington, D.C. I did three years full-time. I did all my requirements, and my senior year was really a gut year. And I said, 'Law school will always be there.' I was in no hurry to get right into that.

Everybody I've ever worked with - 99.9 percent of the time, I've had a successful or very agreeable experience with.

All actors have a significant amount of vanity about work, and necessarily so. Things they will do and won't do, and I've completely lost all of that. I don't care.

I think I'm just like a lot of people who had nothing.

I consider myself a pretty good conversationalist, but you wind up being downgraded to idiot status when you don't speak the language!

My children are the only thing in my life that makes me happy.

You have a lot of optimism when you are young.

Grown-ups yell. I don't know why, but they do.

I'm not an impressionist, per se, but if you do any kind of comedy - and they ask you to do that, most of the time - there's some degree of appreciation, I think, involving somebody you like.

I have always wanted to do a show where I could stay home. When you make movies, you might as well take a dart and throw it at a map.

I know some people who live this much more insulated life in Los Angeles, where their feet never touch public ground. They walk out of their bathroom, their living room, they get into their garage, their car, and the next thing you know, they're at the valet parking of the restaurant or the store or the office. They're in a bubble the whole time.

Everything I hated about L.A. I'm beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that.

I turned popular music on the radio, and I never listened to it again after that, in about 1985. That's when I switched over to classical music, and I pretty much stayed with that since then.

I went to Jimmy Gandolfini's funeral, and when I was there, I realized Jimmy Gandolfini didn't have Twitter.

I think about how much I used to work and how much I used to make that the priority.

My whole life is classical now. Except my wife. I don't have a classical wife. I have a classy wife, but I don't have a classical wife.

Everything that Bush touches turns to manure in public policy.

I know there's an impression that I'm someone who seeks to have violent confrontations with people. I don't. Do I regret screaming at some guy who practically clipped my kid in the head with the lens of a camera? Yeah, I probably do, because it's only caused me problems.

I remember during my lifetime I would meet women, and it was almost like God would say to me, 'Now, this woman here is not the one you are going to end up with, but she is going to be a lot like this woman; look at this woman, study this woman.' And when my wife showed up, He was like, 'You recognize her now?'

I'd rather live my life off screen and give only a certain amount of energy to the work.

I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible.

Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends.

Often in films, you have no idea where you're going to be six months from now. And I grew very weary of that. And television, although it wasn't necessarily as creatively diverse as filmmaking can be, it was the lifestyle choice that I needed to make.

I'm doing 'Rock of Ages' one day, making out with Russell Brand. Soon after that, I'm advocating with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Cynthia Nixon for marriage equality.

There's almost no popular music I listen to now. I'll hear it because it's everywhere... Music is ubiquitous now.

My father would chaperone at high-school dances, and the toughest guy in the high school used to want to fight my father. My father broke his hand on a guy's head once in school.

We all have that moment when we think, 'Hand me that Oscar now - you don't even have to have the ceremony'.

It's good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully, like we're friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for.

I wanted to work with Cate Blanchett. She is one of the five greatest movie actresses of her generation.

I don't need to be married to Georgia O'Keeffe or Lillian Hellman, but I like being with a woman I can look up to.

There's a way I could have done things differently. I know that. If I offended anyone along the way, I do apologize.

When you're with someone, you want everything to be great. And that's the pressure that you put on, and what you just can't do.

I need to be home more. That's the goal now. I have a steady flow of things people want me to do.