Top 339 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin Spacey - Page 2

I couldn't imagine something asking as much of me as 'House Of Cards.' It's a great warm-up for coming back to the screen.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

Am I arrogant? I've been arrogant, sure; everybody's been arrogant.

Life's all about perceptions.

The relationship with the cast has everything to do with how a performance develops, and in a sense that while you're discovering a play in the course of rehearsal with the director, you're also discovering it with your fellow actors. We're all in it together.

The less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen.

I'll tell you one thing. I've never heard a director saying that the dailies suck.

Film is very condensed.

The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody.

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.

I was on a couple of scholarships. I had a job in the school administrative office. I had a job as a hat-check boy in a restaurant. I had another job as an assistant to a casting director. It took a lot to get myself enough money to put myself through Juilliard.

I would love to do much more singing; it's just one of those things where I can't quite describe what it feels like when you're standing in front of a forty piece orchestra, and there's nothing between you and an audience but a microphone. It's like strapping yourself to a locomotive, and I love it.

There are times when you do a play when you are living in the character over a two-and-a-half-hour period or longer, and you come to the end of the night, and you can feel like you were hit by a truck.

Games are advancing in terms of storytelling and trying to create a character, and it's a brand new audience for me.

I always thought that, in a way, you want your Superman to be a total unknown.

My mother always, always, always thought that I was going to be famous. Thought that I was going to win Oscars. In fact, I believe I accepted the Oscar as a ketchup bottle many a time in front of my mother in the kitchen. 'I'd like to thank the Academy,' I said with a ketchup bottle.

I'm able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie.

I've always found it strange that a director can hire any designer he wants from any country. But if he hires a foreign actor, it's like he's stolen the crown jewels and run across the river with them.

If you ignore the murdering and the conniving, Francis Underwood is an effective politician.

I guess I've been training in the theater for as long as I can remember.

Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.

Kids aren't growing up with a sense of television as the aspirational place for their ideas.

No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story.

It's always the big question in our lives if you have a lot of success. What do you do with it? Buy more houses, buy more cars, buy more stuff, be wealthy and distant and unengaged? Or do you take all that good fortune that has come towards you and spread the love, do something with it?

I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.

I am so leading the life that I want and wanted and dreamed of as a kid. I'm trying very hard not to abuse it or take advantage of it.

I felt that I shouldn't be an actor who just makes movie after movie in a quest for prestige and money.

People think that direct address was invented by Ferris Bueller, but in fact, it wasn't. It was invented by Shakespeare.

If you go out eight times and play tennis eight times this week, yeah, it's the same rules, but it's a different game every time you're out on that court. You're working on a different part of your game every time you're out on that court; your partner's working on a different part of their game, and the act of being watched changes it.

People say, 'If you open a movie online at the same time as in movie theatres, no one is going to go to the movies.' That's just not true. People love to go out and have a shared experience; they always will.

When I was young, I learned very early on that I could make my mother laugh. And that was one of the greatest sounds I ever heard.

I'm attracted to things that are challenging and fun and interesting, and it certainly seems that audiences enjoy them as well.

The only real experiences I've had with therapists were the ones who were working with me and my family when my mother was ill.

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions you'd rather not know the answers to.

I think that there was a period of time - and I would reckon it was about 12 years - where I was just determined to see if I could build a career for myself.

I have never played a game in my life.

I've never done a movie that's shot more than 40 days because I just don't do those kinds of films.

You can almost hear people saying, 'We're going to make a movie about an election' and 'We're going to make a movie about a lobbyist.' You can hear the yawning start across the nation.

Whether that's positive or not, people are talking about the Old Vic Theater again with passion and commitment and controversy and debate.

In film, movies' schedules are based on three things: actors' availabilities, when are sets being built, when you can rent the place you're going to film in.

Where the gaming world is going - and certainly Activision proved it by hiring me - is being willing to push and bend and move in a new direction of actually capturing the character and storytelling.

Why is 'Game of Thrones' the most pirated show in the history of TV? Because people can't get it fast enough, that's why.

I've taken the experiences that I've had in the theatre and applied them to film and television and now games.

When you study, as I did, every theatrical beginning in this country, none of them have been greeted well. The Royal Shakespeare Company was a disaster, Peter Hall was a disaster, Richard Eyre was a disaster, Trevor Nunn was always a disaster.

One of the tasks that any artistic director has is, you're trying to bring elements together that will work. The truth is that you could bring all the best talents in the world together and produce a big turkey.

I might have lived in England for the last several years, but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

There's nothing like standing in a place and wanting nothing so much as to change but simply not being able to.

I certainly identify with the role of mentor and, to some degree, maybe teacher. I do a lot of work with kids at the Old Vic.

I accept the fact that some things don't go the way you hope.

Essentially, your voice is an instrument; it's a muscle, and you have to treat it like a muscle, and so you have to work it.

What I like about Britain is that I can live a normal life here.

I'm not revolted by Washington.

As an actor, you're always nervous as to what a director will do with something.

It's interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done.

People don't tend to hassle me because when I've got a hat on, I look like a banker. I'm just a plain guy.

I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political.

I don't play villainy. I wouldn't even know how to play it.

Maybe there are people who are gamers who haven't seen movies I have made, or the movies I have made have made no impression on them at all.

The audience, the place you're in, has everything to do with how your performance goes.

I'm not going to make general comments about the British press.