A Quote by James Mangold

For me, making a lot of dramas on one side it's a different sort of challenge, and on the other, it's not a challenge at all, meaning that my goal is to try and bring the realism and acting you might find in a straight drama with the intentions and conflict, where it doesn't feel tongue-in-cheek, but rather committed and real.
The goal with me, and the way I challenge myself as an actor, is to go from genre to genre. I like that. A lot of actors always challenge themselves. But for me the challenge lies not only in getting better, but going from drama to comedy to action or whatever the case may be, and having a wide array of movies in terms of my filmography.
The real challenge in acting is in comedy. It's easier to get that gasp in a drama. Not easy, because you still have to find that emotional pitch. And when you do something in drama and you hear that sob from the audience it's so fulfilling. But as a comic actor, when the laugh is supposed to come and you punch in that line and nothing happens it is dreadful. It's horrific and you feel like dying right there.
Winston was a bit of a challenge, all right, from a lot of different perspectives. It wasn't just the culture or the class divide or the historical baggage - it was also the age difference. We had to see if I could be aged-up legitimately, without it becoming some sort of hokey acting challenge.
Playing is no challenge; every time that you get a role you get to go play with other people in the sandbox and so there is no challenge, real challenge. The challenge, the major challenge is getting the work, finding the sandbox.
Acting is a challenge at times. I mean, when you have scenes where you're jumping into a mascot bear to travel back in time, and you try to make that seem real. For me, I'm a person that has a pretty wild imagination, just kind of letting that run wild and sort of just doing the best you can to not feel stupid.
I think some modesty actually serves me by just accepting that I am an instrument. I'm not trying to match up to an ideal as some kind of challenge. It's more like I use the family tree of music and song that I feel has fit me as an encouragement; like it's a bed to rest in rather than a challenge to try to better myself over, to try to.
I'm definitely a fan of sort of dramas, independent sort of social dramas where you play really challenging roles. Every actor wants to play those dark roles and it's definitely true for me and I'd love to kind of challenge myself in any way possible.
Performance wasnt something that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives...that people might relate to in terms of process, everyday activities- bathing, eating, etc.
I try to find a vocalist that I don't have to make better. I try to find a vocalist that can make me better, and in turn, I can make them better so that we are, as a team, making ourselves better. I like the vocalist to challenge me. I love to challenge a vocalist.
I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek.
For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bring out poetry as an art, rather than the challenge to say smart things.
I've said a lot of stuff in the past, but not with any intentions to hurt anybody. It's all a bit tongue-in-cheek.
For me it's the challenge -- the challenge to try to beat myself or do better than I did in the past. I try to keep in mind not what I have accomplished but what I have to try to accomplish in the future.
You're always looking for something in life that's going to be a new challenge or something that's going to bring something different to ask of you. Hopefully I can just find projects, whatever they might be, that inspire me to do some good work.
It's a great challenge to me, playing someone who is supposed to be absolutely normal and not remarkable and contemporary and yet at the same time does have a lot of fantastic power. As an actor it's a great challenge to bring reality to that.
Making music videos, I try to bring musicians into the logistics of filmmaking, and I try to preserve whatever's of value and achievable in their idea. If it's something I can't achieve, I tell them straight. You want to make sure that the artist really loves the idea and is committed to it, otherwise they're not going to feel great when they're up there miming it.
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