Kevin Spacey quotes:

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  • Clarence Darrow was a unique and courageous man. Several of my favourite actors have played Darrow... Henry Fonda, Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy.

  • Over the years, I've been trying to build a relationship with an audience. I've tried to maintain as much of a low profile as I could so that those characters would emerge and their relationship with audiences would be protected.

  • Edward Norton and I have known each other awhile. I just think he's the real deal, supremely talented and smart. He's got a great sense of humor.

  • 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 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.

  • It's a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it's a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you're told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.

  • 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.

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

  • After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

  • Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of 'House of Cards' at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they've been doing on 'House of Cards' and lots of other shows, we should let them binge.

  • Storytelling helps us understand each other, translate the issues of our times, and the tools of theater and film can be powerful in helping young people to develop communication/collaboration skills, let alone improving their own confidence.

  • 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.

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

  • If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span?

  • What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

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

  • 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 like being able to go to a local pub and have great food and particularly love pubs that welcome my dogs.

  • My mother was sarcastic and delightful and, trust me, quite remarkable.

  • I think that what is truly unfortunate is when an entire party makes a decision that they're going to block every single thing that a president wants to accomplish. It's very - it's very hard to get anything done in those circumstances.

  • Living in London has become incredible. I suppose it's easy to love where you live if you love what you're doing. But this is not just a visit: it's my home.

  • 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.

  • But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.

  • 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?

  • At the end of the day, people have to respect people's differences. I am different than some people would like me to be.

  • To look in the eyes of audiences and see the kind of naughty glee that they got with being on the inside, the audience becomes your co-conspirators.

  • I open myself up every time I walk on screen and give you everything that I am. There are parts of me that are in every movie that I've done. That to me is what my job is.

  • I've been on sets where things weren't relaxed because someone was creating tension for no reason.

  • Some politicians that I've seen have been brilliant with the public. They almost speak with the skill of an actor.

  • The more shows that are produced, the more writers are hired, producers are hired, actors are hired, directors are hired, it means the more people will get employed. It's better for the economy. It's a fantastic thing.

  • 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.

  • The process of doing a play is an organic one, and the process of doing a film is totally inorganic.

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

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

  • I have wanted to have children. I do want to have children.

  • 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.

  • The stigma that used to exist many years ago, that actors from film don't do television, seems to have disappeared. That camera doesn't know it's a TV camera... or even a streaming camera. It's just a camera.

  • It's a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition.

  • There are good people in the lobbying industry. Lobbyists can serve a very useful purpose.

  • Working in film tends to isolate actors - it's your close-up; it's all about you.

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

  • People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

  • For kids growing up now, there's no difference watching 'Avatar' on an iPad or watching YouTube on TV or watching 'Game of Thrones' on their computer. It's all content. It's just story.

  • If you're lucky enough to do well, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down.

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

  • What's my favourite book? It changes all the time.

  • I remember meeting the likes of Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart for the first time and being completely starstruck.

  • I have never played a game in my life.

  • 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.

  • People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.

  • Francis Underwood was entirely based on Richard III. When Michael Dobbs wrote 'House of Cards' in the original British series, Richard III is what he based the character on.

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

  • Secondarily, I think films that are driven by music also terrify studios.

  • You have to always be ready, always be alive, and always be willing to move in a new direction.

  • As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.

  • I'm used to people thinking I'm nuts. And you know what? I kind of love it.

  • Life's all about perceptions.

  • 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.

  • You learn every single day when you're running a company. You learn as you go.

  • The next day I was in my school's production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn't recognized before.

  • If we don't reach out to make theatre affordable to the young generation, we will lose them all.

  • You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

  • If you haven't turned rebel by twenty you've got no heart; if you haven't turned establishment by thirty you've got no brains!

  • For me, coming to work every day has turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be.

  • I often make the analogy with tennis. Every match the rules are the same, but no game is ever the same. Theatre is like that. Every time is different.

  • Exposure to the arts and culture is enormously valuable.

  • Why not sit around a Beverly Hills pool collecting residual cheques? That is not the kind of life I want.

  • Secret Cinema has created a new way of experiencing film. The fusion of film and theatre allows for a much more powerful experience and adds an incredibly unique dimension for the audience. It certainly did for me. I was blown away

  • The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty.

  • The control is shifting because of the democratisation of the internet. My industry is very good at building walls to stop people getting in.

  • You can't win a marathon without putting some bandaids on your nipples!

  • I feel it's a responsibility for anyone who breaks through a certain ceiling... to send the elevator back down and give others a helpful lift.

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

  • Sometimes its the crazy people who turn out to be not so crazy.

  • Am I now supposed to go on Oprah and cry and tell you my deepest, darkest secrets because you want to know?

  • Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.

  • The 24 Hour Plays is a quite brilliant, exhilarating event for everyone concerned.

  • Whats my favourite book? It changes all the time.

  • Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get.

  • I find it sad that by not talking about who I sleep with, that makes me mysterious. There was a time when I would have been called a gentleman.

  • If you look back through history in the United States, there have been very few landslide elections. Half the country always voted for someone else.

  • We've learned the lesson that the music industry didn't learn: give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.

  • I'm not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I'm living any kind of a life. I'm actually trying to convince people: I don't want you to know what I'm living, because it's none of your business.

  • [Washington, DC] feels like you're watching performance art. A lot of the time. I don't believe them, I don't believe what they say, I don't think they're being absolutely sincere. I think it's performance art. And most of them are bad actors.

  • I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me.

  • I've never heard of a situation where, because somebody had a particular political belief, they didn't get a part. I think it's a bit of a myth.

  • I suppose the most important thing is to stay interested. It's very easy in life if you get to a place where you're successful to hit the same groove on the record player over and over again because it's safe.

  • Look, at the end of the day people have to respect people's differences. I am different than some people would like me to be.

  • Look, 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,

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

  • No matter how good you might be in a movie, you'll never be any better. But in a play, I can be better next Tuesday. That's the thrill of it.

  • 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.

  • I have always believed that the risk takers are eventually rewarded.

  • I was not a studious kid, and I struggled to find things that would command my attention and engage my ideas and energies.

  • Stay true to your brand and true to your voice and audiences will respond to that authenticity with enthusiasm and passion.

  • When you're just able to distill it down to the idea and the feeling that a character is experiencing in a scene, it can become very, very razor sharp and really clean and really efficient and simple. And sometimes it takes twenty-five years to learn how to be simple.

  • I've been around politics a long time. I've seen it at its best and its worst, been at so many events, listened to private conversations versus public speaking, understood the game of it, and in many ways the theatrics.

  • Clarence Darrow was a unique and courageous man. Several of my favourite actors have played Darrow Henry Fonda, Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy.

  • We're going to see a lot of companies that have been portals of entertainment become producers.

  • Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it. Well, some will still steal it, but I think we can take a bite out of piracy.

  • Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

  • I have long been a supporter of The Prince's Trust, and so when American Express asked me to launch 'Amex Be Inspired' and help young people build their confidence and fulfil their potential, I was delighted to get involved.

  • It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.

  • For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I liked it because it was such a dangerous script and showed just what human beings are capable of. Here was a movie in which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, who always win in every movie they ever do, simply don't win. I felt that was outrageous for a commercial movie.

  • I am now a commander of the British Empire.

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

  • Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.

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

  • Audiences grew to like this duality of feeling, where you're both championing a character and you're revolted by them.

  • I became a bit of a jerk. A kind of a nasty jerk.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

  • I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

  • My admiration for 'Mary Tyler Moore' is very, very big because they went out on top.

  • A British director directed 'American Beauty,' an important film about American life, and it didn't matter. What only mattered was everyone's sensibility.

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