Alden Ehrenreich quotes:

I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do. So I really want to be a part of those movies that say something good to a lot of people.

The aspect of kind of living in your imagination and creating a more romantic vision of the world than the reality that you're given - that's definitely something I can sort of relate to.

[Warren Beatty] definitely sees 'Rules' as a comedic consequence to the American sexual puritanism that is dramatically presented in 'Splendor.'

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers films and westerns and stuff like that. Thats where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.

When Tetro came out, I met with Warren Beatty for the first time. I had, like, a four-and-a-half-hour lunch with him, and then over the next five years continued to meet with him and go to his house.

For me, it was watching 'Reds' and 'Splendor in the Grass.' To me, 'Splendor' is like the companion piece to 'Rules Don't Apply.' It's set in the time when Warren [Beatty] came to Hollywood, and when he did that first film.

Woody Allen is kind of the one example I don't have. Because the way he works and the amount of shooting time that I did on that film, I didn't really get to know him, so he kind of stays as "Woody Allen" to me.

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.

An era that I specifically like is sort of late 50's, early 60's. I guess mid 50's too. I like these types of films that deal with post WWII America and this more complex leading man that kind of emerges from that.

I really want to be a part of those movies that say something good to a lot of people.

I didn't read the script [ Rules Don't Apply ] for a couple years. It basically amounted to this kind of apprenticeship with Warren [Beatty]: conversations and learning about his whole background in the film industry and his life.

[Howard Hughes ] approached filmmaking like he approached all of his inventiveness - it gave him an opportunity to make a name for himself in the world.

Howard Hughes innovation was in the aviation field. His designs and spirit of experimentation was at the forefront. As far as his work as film producer, he certainly went after a bigger and more ambitious kind of filmmaking, even if he wasn't necessarily a cinema artist.

It was pretty fun [auditioning on the Millennium Falcon], because I enjoyed the material a lot. Last year I read for the directors, then came to England and did a test on the Falcon, then came back and did a couple more screen tests in Los Angeles.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff.

You need those people to also have power and authority, and in a way that has been the story of my career.

The biggest challenge to being an actor is when you're not working, just being unemployed, the downtime and not having anything to do.

But even a kid, directing was something that I did. I made short films in school. I feel like I've been in the best film school in the world.

I'm just excited to be a part of the movie [Star Wars]. It's always the particulars that are the most exciting.

The idea of it [Star Wars] is really exciting, but the most fun part is the actual job you get to do: the character that you get to play, the people that you work with, the day-to-day experience.

Each film and each character is a completely new set of challenges. It doesn't feel like you can rest on something you may have done well in the past.

I honesty feel that each film has its own particular challenges.

I remember Tetro was a big deal to me at that time. It was going from zero to one: Never having been in a movie, a person who had no relationship to any of that, and that was my first movie.

For me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting.

Some movies, I think, present ideas of the world that just don't help people with their lives. They just present things that are fleeting or stupid. So that's what I'm careful about - making sure I'm part of something that is saying something that I think is valuable in the world of people, not necessarily in the world of art.

I feel about romance the same way I do about a vocation; it's a calling.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff. So, getting to work with those kinds of directors and getting to tell those stories is what I want to do.

I had an audition process that went on for a long time, and I got to spend a lot of time with the guys who are directing the film. Getting to be around them and being around the world a little bit has been the main experience so far. I did my audition on the Millennium Falcon for one of my screen tests, which was pretty cool.

My parents weren't involved in show business but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house.

With 'Hail, Caesar!' it was about all the skill sets I had to learn, but each movie requires a different way of working. You're a piece in a new world, and there is always a difficult part within that world. For me, it's not consistent from movie-to-movie, each film has a central challenge.

I actually remember getting asked when we were at the Cannes Film Festival, what I expected to do next. I remember feeling like there was no way I could've imagined that something like Tetro would have happened to me.

Same with the Coen brothers and Warren [Beatty]. And then slowly you get to know each one of them as a person, and that becomes a kind of separate entity, where you just know the human being.

It's a little bit about how I felt about Hail, Caesar! and now Star Wars. I could not have predicted those things happening to me. But I'm just happy they come along.

When I worked with anybody like Woody Allen, there's the name, and your understanding of who they are before you meet them, that stays in your head a little bit.

Like I've known Francis [For Coppola] for so long I think, "Oh, Francis." And then you see his name on something with The Godfather, and you go, "Oh, yeah. He's also that." The person you knew of before you met the actual person.

Basically, Beautiful Creatures was the first lead that I had since Tetro, and it was a lesson in seeing what it's like to film a movie that's of a much bigger scale. It was a good initiation.

I met Scarlett [Johansson] briefly, but Josh [Brolin] and George [Clooney], in particular, were so welcoming and so inclusive and really brought me into the fold from the beginning. They were just very considerate of me, and it meant a lot [shootong Hail, Caesar!].

It feels like you're being invited into a kind of community [working with the Coen brothers].

Even when Warren [Beatty] cast me, it had been two years between films at that point.

[The Coen brothers] hire the same people over and over again, so there's a shorthand between all of the people they're working with.

One of the big takeaways from that experience [in Blue Jasmin] was just what a thrill it was to act with somebody like Cate Blanchett operating on that caliber. Because what she was doing was very powerful. T

[Woody Allen] does very few takes, and he doesn't give a whole ton of directions, although he does give direction.

[The Yellow Birds] is based on a novel written by Kevin Powers, who is an Iraq War vet. I play a soldier who promises my friend's mother I'm going to keep him alive. But when we go overseas to Iraq, he gets killed. It's about what happened to him, my reckoning and dealing with that as I return home from the war.

I had the opportunity to learn more about what life is like for a soldier [in The Yellow Birds].

I'm glad to be an actor to be employed by people who are now 12, probably. I look forward to that.

What's exciting to me now is the idea in participating in a landscape of moviemaking that's completely different - the way you can make a movie with a 5D or something and what's going to come out of that. Especially the generation under us who grew up with the internet. When they are making films in the next ten years, they're gonna be so different from what we've seen before because their whole worldview is so different.

Each time demands its own kind of film.

Acting-wise, I've had all these experiences. Yet when I look at certain people whose careers I admire, they've gotten to play so many different characters. So it's just that - getting to have more of these singular little adventures where you get to be a part of a completely different world.

For me, each one of those experiences stands on its own. The first one was with Steven Spielberg, who helped me to get an agent and vouch for me, and that gave me the confidence to continue.

I had four years of auditions, and nothing happened, until Francis Ford Coppola took a shot on me ['Tetro' in 2009]. I hadn't done a film, and suddenly I was the lead.

So many times you can't get a foot in the door unless you're already in the room.

The movie [Blue Jasmin] shot very quick. I met Cate Blanchett in the car on the way to set, and we did that last scene, and she was just so phenomenal. I had basically met her that day. Because the way he shoots, everybody just shows up and does their thing, and he moves us very quickly.

I remember pretending to be the characters in the movies when I was a little kid.

You get bummed out, and then you go, "Oh! Now I get to go buy a present for myself." That kind of helps.

I buy myself a present whenever I don't get a role that I really wanted.

[ Being director] is really reassuring to me that it's just about who is right for that role and less about if you ace the audition. It's just about getting to know people, not about who's a better actor a lot of the time. It's about who fits that particular suit, you know?

Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it. I don't find it very helpful to know who else is going up for stuff, generally.

[Warren's Beatty] first film being with this very important director [Elia Kazan], I think we related on that in a big way. And I just was genuinely curious about his experiences in film, and about the people he knew.

I've had a couple opportunities where I've been on the other side of the audition process as a director.

I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off.

The last three movies I've done, I played a cowboy, then I played a soldier, and now I play Han Solo. So the little kid in me is having a real joyride.

I've always felt whatever the opposite of disillusioned is. I guess illusioned with movies and with people in movies and things like that. It's all exciting to me.

Even though I grew up in L.A., no one in my family was in the movie industry.

Warren [Beatty] was very adamant and very encouraging of me to direct. It's definitely something that I'd like to pursue more in the future.

By anyone's measure, [Warren Beatty] is proven himself. But he still sets out to make something as great as it possibly can be.

[Warren Beatty] will sometimes spend hours on a very small detail to make sure he gets it right. After the kind of work that he's made, he certainly doesn't have to be doing that.

Elia Kazan - the films he made were such a big deal for me when I was growing up.

Warren [Beatty] loves to talk about his experiences with [Elia] Kazan.

You do need these people to go out on a limb for you, thinking you're right for a role rather than having box office numbers.

I'd never worked with an actor-director before [Warren Beatty].

Warren [Beatty] did a very cool thing, where he directs in character.

Let's say [Warren Beatty] wants you to speak louder in a scene. He won't stop playing the role and say to you as a director, "Will you speak louder on the next take?" He'll say it as Howard Hughes: "I can't totally hear you. Why don't you speak up a little bit?" To kind of keep this rhythm going.

The actors at that time had to learn all that stuff, it wasn't just hyperbole. What was appealing to me about being an actor at that time is that there was a home base, with job security. You were employed on a regular basis, and you had to sometimes do things you didn't want to do, but it was there. I also liked Hobie Doyle positivity.

That is sort of the eternal question for people who go to Hollywood...what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and forces you to think about doing something else? When do you throw in the towel?

[Warren Beatty] is voraciously detail-oriented.

I grew up watching a lot of old movies, so getting to ask about making movies in the '70s and people he was friends with, like Orson Welles, Lillian Hellman and Charlie Chaplin, and hearing a first-person account was pretty incredible.

When you work for the Coens, they are so fun and so organized. They treat everyone with such respect. And the character I got to play was so fun.

That was cool, because they've all [ George Clooney and Josh Brolin and Scarlett Johansson] worked with the Coens. They were much more at ease with them at the outset, and they were all kind of familiar with the shorthand that the Coens had.

I'm trying to make myself sound better.

I feel like I would have ultimately ended up pursuing acting. It probably would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer for me to get into it professionally.

When I was 14 years old, I was by no means trying to work professionally at all.

That's a lot more legitimate than the retail therapy I do.

I auditioned for four or five years and didn't get anything after that.

I got turned down for a million jobs until I got my first movie with Francis [Ford Coppola].

I think that having had [Steven Spielberg's] confidence in me probably made me a little more immune to feeling as bad about myself in the face of rejection. I also was just so young - I was unaware enough to not take it too seriously.

That's something that Francis [Ford Coppola] would always say. I remember when I was doing Tetro, he said, "Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."

I really feel lucky that I still feel excited about the actual work that I get to do. I just happen to love it, and I could easily see, for somebody else, that not being the case.

Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

Their way of working [the Coen brothers] is always kept pretty mysterious. I was so curious to see how they make these movies. It was just such a joy - they seem to have so much fun making their movies.

I had one line. My two larger scenes had gone fine, and then on that day I screwed up that line over and over and over again. And every time I screwed it up, they can't use the whole thing because they're only using the one shot [in Blue Jasmin]. That was my last day.

I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have any real success until I was older and basically out of high school. I think that was a real confidence boost for me, having it all start that way, in that very privileged position of having him vouch for me.

Just getting to talk to that person [Woody Allen ] in real life was pretty wild.

[ Woody Allen] persona in the films are so iconic; it's like on par with Groucho Marx or something like that.

I talked to Woody Allen for half an hour or something. It was pretty incredible. He really went into lots of detail about the story [in Blue Jasmin] and what actually happened. Just talking to him is very surreal.

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."

I've definitely been spoilt. Every movie I've done, it's always the same criteria: finding a great story, and finding a great part to play.

I think you always feel like you're about a hair's breadth away from being a bad actor anyway... It's not too hard to let the rope go slack, so to speak.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

I did my first film with Francis Ford Copploa which spoiled the hell out of me.

There's a lot of complicated magical reasons why I'm not at the party that are too long and semantic to go into.