A Quote by Jeff Daniels

I never starved. And you know, whatever talent I have, I've relied on that, versus image or star. I have just said, 'Hire me if you want somebody good.' I tried to be as good as I could be every time out, and that's kind of bridged the decades.
I never starved. And you know, whatever talent I have, I've relied on that, versus image or star.
When you are a young actor, you're imbued with the high purpose of your art. You think, 'They hire me for my talent; if that's not good enough, then they can hire somebody else.' Later, you realize that your body is as much a part of what you do as your talent.
've had good friends who got married after they've been together for years and they've said that it was the "next step" for them. Or, they've said, "You just can't bail out anymore." And I've wondered, What made you think you could just bail out before [the wedding]? You don't invest that kind of time and energy with somebody and then just go, "All right, see you later."
I have never had a plan. Things happen to me, and, of course, I make friends who later say, 'Hey, you know who would be good for this? McKean would be good for this.' And they hire me, and if they like me, they hire me again, or the word gets out.
But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.
I'm always looking to rock out. But it isn't really about rocking out versus being mellow, in terms of your personal satisfaction. In the end, you just want to be good. When you look at something that's really good, it might be Iggy Pop or it might be Leonard Cohen. Whatever it is, you want it to be really good.
I tried to talk my daughter out of going with a hockey player but, he's a good kid. He asked me if he could marry Carrie before he asked her. I said: You want to what? I thought he was just going to ask for more ice time.
Most of the time for me, you're learning what not to do, as opposed to what to do. You never know what to do. I don't, especially in a work environment. You have a little formula yourself. But when I see a director do something I think, whatever he or she just said totally screwed that actor up and now they're worse. I'm never going to do that. I'm going to figure out something else. I want my movie to be good. And that's how it works.
Of course I want to look good in clothes. And it never makes me feel good when somebody who has an insane figure tells me, 'I eat whatever I want.'
I know who I am supposed to be with. Im just waiting until the time is right. I know what i want. I want to be so sure of everything in my life and be so good on my own that someone just comes in to compliment it. I want somebody who is happy. I dont want to meet someone who needs me. I want someone who is good on his own.
I'm very lucky that I'm not a photographer for hire - people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I've worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.
When Wikileaks came out... never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff." They tried to hack the Republican, the RNC, but we had good defenses. They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they tried to hack both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it very interesting when I read this stuff and I said, "Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading".
I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you're not that good. You just reached the level here. I don't ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.
I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make.
I always said to myself when I walked into the arena 'today they're going to know how good I am' and that was the attitude I carried with me every single time and just felt like at the end, you can't hold talent down. If you have it, eventually it's going to shine through and you just have to keep pushing.
If you have talent, I believe that talent will win out. In other words, if you're a good broadcaster, if you're a funny comic, you'll be heard. If you know how to do a broadcast, if you're a good newsman, if you can see an event and describe it, you're going to be heard and you're going to be seen. So there's always room. Now with cable and satellite and Internet, it's endless. You could blog, you could be your own talent.
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