Top 181 Quotes & Sayings by Ben Affleck - Page 3

I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.

You have to pay people real money.

When you hire great actors, you're lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You're happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director's chair.

People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, "In the movies, they do crazy stuff."

Directing is monumentally complicated and it's a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I'm not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, 'yeah, it's good!' Some day.

Such a senseless and tragic day. My family and I send our love to our beloved and resilient Boston.

I thought I could rely on the plot in the novel and fill in the colour between the lines, but I made a mistake with that assumption. It was really, really hard because you pull a few things apart and then you realise how everything relies on everything else and it can all fall apart.

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt -- and fueled even more than Hollywood by money -- if that's possible.

People think you have this exciting and romantic life, because you project this exciting, romantic life on screen. But in reality you're just doing the same thing as everyone else - you know, sitting around watching TV with your gut hanging out, playing with your kid, or even sitting on the toilet. You know what's weird? Even I'm not that interested in my personal life any more.

A lot of my shows in the past have been more theatrical than others, but you really get the bug for it when you direct on stage.

I have three women in the house. I get to be wrong three times a day.

No actor forgets the times he couldn't get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don't want that momentum to stop when you get it

Family is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't mean you can't do other stuff in your life. In fact, having a family makes whatever other thing you have that much richer. If it was just me, I'd be home alone and think, 'Well, something good happened at work,' but it's much nicer to share it with people you love.

I'm always described as 'cocksure' or 'with a swagger,' and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency... You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it.

Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Nobody goes to a movie and watches the script. There is a lot of other stuff going on.

I try to cast really good actors and give them a chance to do their very best work, give them as much time and space as they need.

There's a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there's a lot of compromise that goes with that.

I never know what my next move will be in Hollywood. It's such an unpredictable town. People get jaded and lost and I've been able to stay a float. I think the next logical step in my career would be to start my own filmmaking empire like (Harvey Weinstein) and (Bob Weinstein) did so many years ago. I think if only the unions weren't so strict in Boston, I'd set up shop there and make films of a certain quality you don't see represented these days. I'm full of ideas and dreams.

One of the differences between now and then is that the idea of body image is a much bigger issue now. Back then, just being kind of heavy and barrel-chested passed for heroic. Now, you wouldn't dare to play a hero without a lot of dieting and various specialised abdomen machines. But that was one of the things which was interesting about it and I did want to portray because there's good and bad.

I like to shoot until we have a relaxed environment on the set, and I try to schedule that.

There are two things for a marriage to be good. One is to work hard on it. The other one is to marry above you. And I succeeded at both of those.

The first Star Wars movie had come out in 1977 and had become this huge phenomenon with all the toys and everything - it just kind of swept America.

I'm terrible in the kitchen. I was mostly raised by my mother and she could cook, so I never perfected that skill. If I had to count on my own cooking to survive, I'd probably be thinner.

They say money can't buy happiness? Look at the smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby!

Jen came first, and then they wanted to cast somebody that would... Kevin liked the idea of having a kind of The Ghost of That Character kind of haunt the movie in a way throughout, by having Raquel look so much like her. And also, it was sort of serendipity. I mean, she was also the best actress. I mean, as you can see Raquel has a pretty appealing, engaging kind of precocious, sparkly quality that's... it was just luck really that she happened to the film.

I've got to work really hard and I know exactly what I've achieved because I know how hard I've worked, and I make sure to work as hard as I absolutely possibly can, because I know that's the only shot I have at being successful.

It takes time to develop a sense of humor, shared world views.

Persia is very different from the Arab Middle East in terms of architecture and language. Even though we think of them as one big Middle Eastern area, in truth, Persia's quite distinct.

You don't know what the pattern of flour and chicken is going to be, but you know you're going to get some good fried chicken.

It's been reinforced to me, and it's a little cliche, but I've learned that you can't make a movie that even works, much less that's good, without really good writing and really good acting. That lesson has led me to not be distracted, so much, by the other stuff going on in filmmaking and to focus on the essence of a story, and the words and the events and the way that those are interpreted by the actors. That philosophy has taken me to a place that I really like.

How about the more than 1 billion Muslim people in the U.S, who aren't fanatical, who don't punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and pray five times a day?

I never really thought of myself as a beefcake kind of guy.

I don't want to jump off the roof or jump for joy depending on my movie reviews, or whether it makes money. I think the larger, more meaningful things are family and the people you love.

(As) a director who is a writer, I have respect for writers, so I'm less likely to step on an idea or a line.

But on balance, a performer wants to feel that there's something there which stands out because you put a lot of effort into it, a lot of energy and a lot of yourself into something. I feel pretty successful about some movies I've been in that have not been greeted with a lot of enthusiasm and I do trust my own criteria.

I simply asked if I could have a go at adapting a screenplay. But I did not want any money, in case I failed because I did not want a script out there with my name on it that might be completely dysfunctional.

[Directing first film:] I was terrified, it was really very scary because there is a lot of responsibility. I think I was terrified because I wanted it to work so much. A lot of actors direct movies but I thought the stakes were kind of higher for me because I really, really cared. [...] I just worked as hard as I possibly could on every single thing, every single day. I said that if this failed it would not be because I didn't work as hard as I possibly could...every day.

School plays are fine. Theater in school is fine.

I get to the point where I feel relaxed, and then I just shoot a ton of material and make a lot of different choices.

I do the same thing for myself (as an actor) that I do for others.

I'm not known for having great relationships with ex-girlfriends, but I've been able to continue one with (Gwyneth Paltrow) that's really valuable.

I feel better about my life every day. My kids get older. My life is very rich and full of wonderful things. I've been very lucky, careerwise.

It's much nicer to be praised than to be damned. But you have to have a certain sense of your own priorities and ideas about what works and what doesn't because otherwise, if you're just looking for eternal validation all the time, you can be motivated by the wrong things and I don't think it's as personally satisfying in your own work.

I have a promptness problem. I am a promptness-free zone.

Clearly, there's a real onus on you to do something correctly when everybody, at least in the United States, had a really clear, specific idea of what this guy looked like - and even more so, what he looked like as Clark Kent and as Superman. You have this whole vast audience of people who would be acutely aware of any deviation whatsoever and probably holding you to a slightly higher standard as a result.

I'm in the worst place you can be. I sell magazines and not movie tickets.

I don't spend too much time just kicking back.

I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best.

On the day he had colonic irrigation: 'I feel I lost my virginity that day in so many ways.'

I like that best as I am so hairy.

Everyone has a different approach, but I like to shoot a lot of film anyway.

If you want to be able to use the powers of Flash and Wonder Woman and Cyborg, you have to have bad guys who are up to snuff and give them what they can really kind of get their cars out on the track and open up the accelerator a little bit.

I love being a father, it's wonderful. It's changed my life. All the clichés are true.

I have definitely noticed that I care less about certain things. Other actors are like: "You can't do that", or "You can't do this. This will position you in the wrong way." That's not my thing. And obviously so, because you can see I don't craft or cultivate my career.

I think when you have children, it just changes your worldview.

One of the things it channelled in me was that experience that I'd had of wearing a big red leather thing on my upper torso in Daredevil with a mask I couldn't see through and an outfit that completely inhibited movement, feeling humiliated and like a fool. I just recalled that.

We wanted to show people what it was like in one of those neighbourhoods that they would never have access to, in bars that they would be too scared to go into, and a world that they would never get to see. All of that is something really unusual and rare and kind of fascinating. And the only way to do that and to make it really worthwhile was that it had to be authentic. We dedicated a lot of time and energy to making that right and real. So we found basically the worst locations that we could.

If I could be somebody, it'd definitely be Brad Pitt. I love the way he looks.