Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by J. K. Simmons
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor J. K. Simmons.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
It's OK to turn down stuff that isn't really interesting and spend the summer with my family.
Everybody does their homework, and we all come together and just knock it out. There are adjustments to make, and if you have actors who are collaborators and who really know how to listen and be in the scene together, than it works out beautifully.
I actually have a degree in music and was aware that music was a tool used in therapy. I didn't realize how far it had come since I was in college in the mid-seventies.
I was not a giant comic book fan as a kid, but to the extent that I did read comics, Spider-Man was always my favorite guy.
Things heal. Bad stuff happens, but you go on. Life takes care of it.
Music to me was never something that I could listen to while reading a book. Especially when I was studying music, if I was going to listen to music, I was going to put on the headphones or crank the stereo, and by God, I was going to sit there and just listen to music. I wasn't going to talk on the phone and multitask, which I can't do anyway.
I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.
If the awards buzz is happening, and it's coming from critics and people in the business and all of that, that's only more good news.
I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting.
I had many, many mentors that I worked with. Music teachers, choir directors, directors in summer stock or in regional theater. You know, people I was able to work with repeatedly and learn from who were really sort of appropriate people for me to work with at a given time in my development as an actor.
When I read the script and saw the jazz music setting, and when I read the name of the filmmaker was Damien Chazelle, I immediately got this mental image of Antoine Fuqua.
I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them.
Teaching is in my blood.
Music has become so ever-present in our lives. You can't walk through a shopping mall or go into a restaurant without what we used to call Muzak.
I am who I am. I have a low voice, and I look like somebody's dad or boss or a police chief, and those roles come my way.
I actually was a musician in college, a composer and singer, and really intended to be the second coming of Leonard Bernstein when I got out.
Almost every character I've ever played - and sometimes this is very conscious and sometimes it's not - I need to find what they love.
Most of my friends - when I was five, six, seven years old - their dads were working in an auto plant in Detroit until 5:30, and then they were sat in rush hour. They weren't around as much. My dad finished at three o'clock, so he was just around more.
We're raising a generation of kids who are being overly praised for incredibly minor accomplishments. I think it's counter-productive.
If you're doing a prison show, HBO is the absolute best place in the world to be doing that because you're not going to have to do all that, you know, 'Prison Break' stuff where you can't really behave and speak like people do in a maximum-security prison.
Seriously, who doesn't want to slap a 27-year-old movie star?
I've had a contemptuous relationship with authority throughout my life. I found myself at odds with authority, and I'm disdainful of blind authority.
If you are lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call them. Don't text; don't e-mail. Call them on the phone.
There's another film - a little Greek movie - that hopefully is going to get some distribution here in the U.S., called 'Worlds Apart,' where I also play a 60-year-old guy who looks a lot like J.K. Simmons, who has a romantic relationship with an appropriate woman.
I do respond well to a director, a teacher - someone who doesn't accept mediocrity.
I don't respond to authority figures who abuse their authority.
You can't play a guy who's just a snake, because what do you draw on?
We all want to not repeat ourselves constantly, and explore the limits of our capabilities.
I've been your yellow M&M for, oh, at least two decades or so, and I've done a lot of other animated stuff in between.
When we were shooting 'Oz,' my wife was doing 'Beauty and the Beast' on Broadway, singing and dancing. It was an interesting dichotomy in our house.
If I was doing a musical, I would never listen to the cast album, because I wanted to do my version of something.
When I got out of college, I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came, and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.
Fortunately, for the first 20 years in my career, I didn't have any other responsibilities outside of myself. I didn't have a wife and kids, so I could afford to sort of barely scrape by, to do theater.
I'm just first of all looking for a part that's well written and speaks to me.
I just saw 'Men, Women & Children' last night, and it's a devastating movie in a lot of ways, but it's so well done, so well acted.
Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.
When I go back to New York all these years later, I'll walk down Seventh Avenue, and I'll hear, 'Yo, Oz!' In New York, I get recognized for that all the time.
I have a degree in music, yeah, from the University of Montana. I studied voice and composition and conducting and all that.
I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.
Screaming is hard after a while.
Being evil is easy.
After the second and final time that I got hugely fat in my life and when I lost that weight six or seven years ago, I pretty much decided that I was going to stay in decent shape for the rest of my life.
Generally, if I read something that I think is really good and that I feel a connection with and is right for me, I see and hear who the guy is, as manifested by me.
I would like to find, or I would like a part to come to me that is like the part that Dennis Franz was fortunate to be able to play on 'NYPD Blue,' a sort of similar-looking actor to me, a generic, bald white guy who you would often think of as playing the authority figure. But he was the disgruntled middle-man. That would be a fun character.
People evolve and it's important to not stop evolving just because you've reached 'adulthood.'
With these big superhero movies, everybody is so tight-lipped about everything, there's a certain amount of just going on faith.
I've been so blessed to have the opportunities that I've had.
I completely agree with feeling the need for or the benefits of being pushed and of being directed on a project and collaborating.
I was studying music in college. I was singing, I was doing operas and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and then I was offered a job as the music director of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, in Bigfork, Montana.
Sometimes I read a really good script, and I just know that it's not a good fit.
My full name's Jonathan Kimble, but my parents didn't want to call me either. So for a while, I went by Kim, which is a name for a girl or a Korean person.
I did Broadway shows. And I started realizing that this is actually how I'm going to make my living. So maybe I should try to do television and film and make a better living and get an occasional residual check so I can pay a mortgage someday.
I've gone back and forth with fine-tuning the kind of conditioning I'm doing. Sometimes trying to shed weight and getting leaner and sometimes trying to pack on a little more muscle.
My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.
I never had intention of coming to New York or L.A. and actually doing more than scraping by - you know, doing plays. And as my career sort of progressed of its own volition, I did come to New York.
I'm not a fan of any genre but am a fan of movies that are intelligent and/or funny. That goes across all genres: a horror movie, a zombie movie, alien invaders, chick flick, or raunchy comedy. If it's well done, I'm a fan.
There's a kind of numbness, a sameness, a lack of motivation in 'good job' culture.
I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.
On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches.
The retired L.A.P.D. motor cops who work set security now, all wear the same uniform, they're great guys with great stories, and they're great at their job, providing security on sets.
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