Top 62 Quotes & Sayings by Owen Wilson
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Owen Wilson.
Last updated on November 3, 2024.
Movies I liked growing up were like Francis Ford Coppolla movies and Scorsese movies.
You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.
I have never taken myself that seriously as an actor.
It's funny how it usually works out that I end up dying. It sort of works out, because by the time I die, I'm usually tired of working on that particular movie, so I look forward to it.
I definitely would like to do some more dramatic roles.
I think the way it works is that when you're casting a movie, you usually want to work with people that you believe in.
It was nice that you guys have such a good sense of humor, because some people don't have the ability to laugh at something.
I remember hearing a good story about Jack Nicholson working with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining [1980]. Nicholson was saying that, as an actor, you always want to try to make things real. And believable. When he was working with Kubrick, he finished a take and said, "I feel like that was real." And Kubrick said, "Yes, it's real, but it's not interesting".
And James L. Brooks then sort of became our mentor, brought us out to Los Angeles and worked on the script for a year with us. We learned so much working with him - just being able to spend time with him, the quality of his mind, the things he comes up with and says. I think Wes [Anderson] and I could go to dinner tonight and spend the whole dinner thinking and talking about things that Jim has said to us over the years.
Acting is more fun than writing. Writing is harder, more like having a term paper.
My roommate in college in Austin, Texas, was Wes Anderson. Wes always wanted to be a director. I was an English major in college, and he got us to work on a screenplay together. And then, in working on the screenplay, he wanted my brother, Luke, and me to act in this thing. We did a short film that was kind of a first act of what became Bottle Rocket.
What's funny is that there's a lot of great Australian actors in American movies but you don't often hear them do their Australian, original accent.
The first thing I remember is Alexander Calder - our school took us on a field trip to go see the Calder mobiles, and that always stuck in my memory.
There's something people find hilarious about dogs surfing and dancing and talking in the movies. I think it's nice for people - I think it's wish fulfillment - to see animals talking.
Through my friend Tony Shafrazi, who's an art dealer and an artist himself - he helped to show Basquiat and Keith Haring, and has worked with the Francis Bacon estate - it was really through my friendship with Tony that I developed even more of an interest in art.
I became sort of an aficionado on the Valentino pajamas, because I like those so much.
If a movie goes south, it might not capsize me the way it used to. But I still have a terrible fear of failure. I'm a huge worrier.
I haven't seen a lot of screwball comedies, and I don't think of myself as loving the genre. To me it sounds like, okay, you're going to be in a lot of crazy situations that are unbelievable.
I lived in Rome for about five or six months during Life Aquatic.
We didn't know what the reception was going to be when we walked out on the runway, but it felt like we were in a rock band. People started cheering. It was a nice way to begin Zoolander 2, with that kind of reception.
Maybe that's why there's an insecurity sometimes in acting, because it's not like there's a correlation between hard work and how people receive you.
In Rome, I loved seeing the Caravaggios. There are churches in Rome that have Caravaggios, and there's one, not far from Piazza Navona, that has the best, I think: St. Matthew with the money.
Anna Wintour has a reputation - she can be very intimidating - but that day [Valentino show] she was just smiling and laughing. That was my first time meeting her, and she seemed like she was having a great time. Everybody was enjoying themselves.
There's what is on screen and then for us, it's if you get along with the people and enjoy showing up at work.
It's not enough just to be real; you have to try to make it interesting or entertaining.
I think of Terrence Malick's movie Days of Heaven - one of Richard Gere's first movies - you can push pause on almost any image in the movie and it looks like a painting.
The way Woody Allen directs, there isn't a lot of direction. He kind of might give a few gentle suggestions, but he really says right from the first day, "Just make it sound natural, and if you don't like something, put it in your own words." And [Woody Allen] gives you a lot of freedom and just very polite.
That's the thing about friendship, it's a lot rarer than love, because there is nothing in it for any body.
If someone doesn't want me, I'm not going to hang around and win them over.
You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can't. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights. I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
I like the Valentino store in Rome.Because in Rome when I'd be riding my bike, that store is right next to the Spanish Steps, and it gets so crowded there, so I could sometimes duck into the Valentino store and go up to the top floor and have a little espresso and just relax and take it easy.
You can't get too attached to any one shampoo. And conditioner, also.
We worked together with Wes Anderson writing a couple more movies together: Rushmore [1998] and Tenenbaums.
I remember working with Jackie Chan on Shanghai Noon [2000], and when we were working on the script, I thought that my character thought about being an outlaw the way a kid today would think about being a rock star, as a way to impress girls. So it was just kind of a funny idea, but once we had that idea, it changed the character and made it something that was funnier to me to play.
I always think about Katharine Graham - she was the publisher of The Washington Post. In her autobiography she talks about the way her parents met. Her father was, I think, in New York just walking by on his way home and looked into a store and saw the lady that became his wife. It was just pure luck. And she said that it once again reminds her of the role that luck and chance play in our life. I really believe that, too.
Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie.
Being in a bathtub with Jackie Chan, I don't know, it has a way of bonding you I'll tell you that. I don't know if there are some weird undertones. It was like we had met in Los Angeles and we didn't have that much to say to each other but, after that bathtub scene, we were great friends.
I saw Ben Stiller's movie Walter Mitty [2013]; it's very beautiful. You look at some of the movies John Ford did with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and then look at Remington and Ansel Adams, and I think you see a connection, certainly in the imagery of the West.
After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky.
I was in Rome this time for about three or four months, and I feel like, by the time I left, every single person in Rome had seen me at least 10 times riding my bicycle. When I first got there, it seemed like people were happy to see me and would say hello. And by the end, they were kind of bored of seeing me. And it was like, "Ugh, there he goes again".
I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.
I try to find a way to make it comfortable or interesting or funny to me.
Because it's me playing the character, trying to find a way to make it believable and entertaining and interesting.
The movies I've done with Wes [Anderson] have a much different quality than some of the more broad comedies. But what is interesting is how many sequels I've done. I've worked with Ben [Stiller] a million times now, and this is yet another sequel we're doing. I guess we're lucky to be in some movies that people wanted to see again.
The Australian accent just a very lovely accent and it doesn't have the pretention maybe of an English accent, but yet seems a little bit more exotic than an American.
I think of myself as a doom person. I'm a worrier. But I like the idea of being an optimist. Maybe I'm the kind of optimist who deep down knows it's not going to work.
Australian cattle dogs, are not like Labradors, where they just like to just sit around by the fire and get petted. They're working dogs, so they have a lot of energy, and they can drive you crazy.
You know you're in love when you wear condoms while having sex with other women.
I guess that's the thing about Rome: It never changes.
It isn't so much that I choose the roles - I mean, I guess there's a little bit of a selection process - but it's more just what people offer you.
I love Francis Bacon. I just saw a great Jackson Pollock exhibit at the Dallas Museum when I was home for Thanksgiving.
Men love to trust God (as they profess) for what they have in their hands, in possession, or what lies in an easy view; place their desires afar off, carry their accomplishment behind the clouds out of their sight, interpose difficulties and perplexities -- their hearts are instantly sick. They cannot wait for God; they do not trust Him, nor ever did. Would you have the presence of God with you? Learn to wait quietly for the salvation you expect from Him.
I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time.
Hansel is certainly about comfort, while still sort of having a peacock principle of wanting to attract attention.
I think somebody like Wes [Anderson] has a very good sense of style and is original. I think my sense of style got a little bit better after I was exposed to you guys at Valentino. Because I'm just in Hawaii and Malibu; it's just kind of T-shirts and surfing-type stuff.
You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.
I guess I was a little bit nervous, because there seemed to be so much secrecy with Ben [Stiller] wanting to make sure that it was a surprise when we walked out on the [Valentino] runway. I remember showing up at Place Vendôme and doing the fitting and seeing the pajamas that I was going to wear - which I like very much - and seeing Ben arrive kind of in disguise.
James L.Brooks is just a very original person. So that was definitely the luckiest, most important thing that happened to me [meeting him]. Then I guess also meeting Ben Stiller. He cast me in the only thing I think I ever auditioned for and got: Cable Guy [1996]. And that led to us becoming friends.
True love is your souls recognition of its counterpoint in another.
Film is definitely a director's medium. They're responsible for the look and everything, and you're a part of that process as an actor, and you try to contribute to the story. But I think it might sound a little pretentious for me to say I think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as a creative person.
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