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The Script [of Regression] Wasn't The Draw For Me. It Was Largely Alejandro [amenabar] And His Way Of Talking. To Hear Him Talking About The Script Was Way More Interesting Than The Script. He Wrote It, And So, English Is His Second Language. It's An Interesting Thing. I've Had That Before. I Was Directed By Alfonso Cuarón Before, Too. It's Always Interesting When You're Being Directed By Somebody Like That. So Much Of Directing Is About Communication, And Finding The Right Words, And What It Means, And How To Convey Certain Emotions And Ideas.

-Ethan Hawke

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The Script [of Regression]

Ethan Hawke

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The Script [of Regression] Wasn't The Draw For Me. It Was Largely Alejandro [amenabar] And His Way Of Talking. To Hear Him Talking About The Script Was Way More Interesting Than The Script. He Wrote It, And So, English Is His Second Language. It's An Interesting Thing. I've Had That Before. I Was Directed By Alfonso Cuarón Before, Too. It's Always Interesting When You're Being Directed By Somebody Like That. So Much Of Directing Is About Communication, And Finding The Right Words, And What It Means, And How To Convey Certain Emotions And Ideas.

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Some People Burn Out, And Some People Like Clint Eastwood, He Was A Wild, International Movie Star In His 30s, And He's Doing The Best Work Of His Life Now. Go Figure.

I Love Working On Scripts. I Love Coming Up With Ideas About What People Would Dress Like Or Talk Like. I Love All That.

Sometimes People, Their Creative Drive Comes From An Energy To Try To Heal Themselves.

I Feel Like Everyone I Meet Is An Imaginary Friend. I Don't Know. The Older I Get The More I Wonder What's Real.

The Thing That Makes A Great Genre Movie Is One That's Not Just Entertainment, Not Just Horror Or Sci-fi Or Whatever. The Ones I Love Are The Genre Pictures With Some Subversive Message Underlying It All.

If I Do Three Movies In A Year, I Don't Feel Like Acting Ever Again.

I Thought I Was So Much Smarter Than Everybody. And I'm Not.

When You Make A Movie With Alejandro Amenábar, He Very Quickly... It Was Very Clear You're Kind Of Operating In His Dream Universe.

My Favorite Stories Are Human, So I'm Always Looking For...

I'm Horrified To Admit That I Just Love Salinger. I Was Devastated To Find Out That Other People Feel The Same Way.

I've Had Several Moments In My Career Where It Seemed Like I Might Not Age Out Of The Bracket The World Wants To Put You In. It's Hard To Keep Growing Up Inside The Performing Arts. It's Very Difficult, And Presents A Lot Of Unique Challenges.

I've Always Been Drawn To The Best Writing That I Can Find. I Don't Care If It's In Movies Or Theater Or Whatever - If You Want To Be In Front Of An Audience, You Have To Do Writing You Believe In.

Your Development As A Person Should Coincide With Your Development In All Aspects Of Your Life.

I Take Pleasure In The Little Things. Double Cheeseburgers, Those Are Good, The Sky Ten Minutes Before It Rains,the Moment Your Laugh Turns Into A Cackle. And I Sit Here, And Smoke My Camel Straights, And I Ride My Own Melt.

The Older I Get, The More I Realize How Rare It Is To Meet A Kindred Spirit.

Everyone Has To Pay Their Child Support, And No Matter If You're A Hollywood Actor Or Anyone Else, It's Always A Little Bit More Than You Want To Pay.

Have This Chet Baker Movie Coming Out And In That Situation, I Went Down The Rabbit Hole Studying Chet Baker And Being Obsessed With The Period And The Music And The Relationships And The Dynamic, And Everything, Drug Addiction. There Was So Much I Wanted To Get At To Kind Of Get At The Truth. With Regression, I Was Certainly In Alejandro's [amenabar] Hands.

The Script [of Regression] Wasn't The Draw For Me. It Was Largely Alejandro [amenabar] And His Way Of Talking. To Hear Him Talking About The Script Was Way More Interesting Than The Script. He Wrote It, And So, English Is His Second Language. It's An Interesting Thing. I've Had That Before. I Was Directed By Alfonso Cuarón Before, Too. It's Always Interesting When You're Being Directed By Somebody Like That. So Much Of Directing Is About Communication, And Finding The Right Words, And What It Means, And How To Convey Certain Emotions And Ideas.

It Was When I Was On The Set Of Dead Poets Society.there Was Actor,his Name Was Norman Lloyd. One Day He Took Us All Aside And Said, "you Guys Don't Even Understand What A Powerful Experience You're Having. You Don't Really Understand What A Gift This Is." We Were Going, "what Does He Mean?" It Was That Really Wonderful Opportunities Aren't To Be Taken For Granted. I Often Found That It Had Embedded Itself In My Memory.

When You Start Becoming Really Successful, The Demons Start To Tempt You - The Demons Of Vanity And Self Importance, Drug Abuse, The Feelings Of Fraudulence. But, It's Also A Thrill. That's What I Found Weird.

There's Something About Knowing Life Is Finite That Makes It So Precious.

It's Certainly An Interesting Moment To Try To Talk About, 'cause You Could Make A Great Show About The Police Force Right Now, With All That's Happening In The News And Ferguson And All Of It.

There Is No Trick To Writing A Believable Love Story, A Heartbreaking Scene Or Real-sounding Dialogue. All You Need Is To Tell The Truth. It’s Always Heartbreaking.

If You Covet Fame, If You Covet All The Superficial Accolades, You're Gonna Be Miserable 'cause You're Never Going To Get Enough Praise. If You Covet Contributing Something Substantive To Movies, Music, Literature, Then You Won't Be Unhappy.

The Most Creative And Most Periods Of My Life That Were, Had The Most Growth, Were The Ones Where I Was Perceived To Be Failing. Perceived Success Is A, Is Really Hard 'cause It Doesn't Really, It's Not Asking You To Grow, See Failure Is Asking You To Grow.

You Need To Be A Good Screen Partner. It's Very Meaningful To Me To Be A Part Of Great Acting Performances.

When I Woke Up I Was Naked. I Have This One Oddball Idiosyncrasy: Sometimes In My Sleep I Take Off All My Clothes.

'brooklyn's Finest,' This Is The Kind Of Movie That's Why I Want To Be An Actor, To Tell Real-life Stories. This Is Where I Feel My Job Is, To Interpret Life.

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I Don't Know What Has Happened To Movies, But Lately Every Movie Is At Least 20 Minutes Too Long. It Used To Be That If You Were Three Hours Long It Was Because It Was Epic - A Movie About Gandhi; Something With Very Important Subject Matters.

Nightmares Are A Strange Thing. Your Worst Fear Is Sometimes Something You Enjoy Thinking About, For Some Strange Reason. I Don't Know Why That Is, But It's Some Kind Of Fantasy That People Play Out. "what Would I Do To Protect My Children? I'd Do Anything." And Then, You Watch It Play Out. I'm Petrified Of Such A Thing.

In All Of Our Society, But Especially In Hollywood, There Is An Obsession With Perfection That Can Lead To Self-loathing And Neurosis And All That Kind Of Stuff.

Time Is So Much A Part Of What Makes You Close To People.

One Of The Things I Can Do Is To Try To Put Myself In Different Kinds Of Movies And That Kind Of Subtly Changes My Work. By The Time My Obituary Is Written, I Want There To Be A Great Western And A Great Comedy.

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Helping Someone

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Getting What You Want

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And The Joy Of My Job - And It's Really True - Is That It's Constantly Evolving And Changing.

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Nothing Teaches You Like Getting Leveled. And I Got Leveled In My Early 30s. Nothing Went Exactly The Way I Thought It Would.

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I Don't Have A Lot Of Experiences Like This Where Every Time I Thought I Had A Good Idea It Was Totally Wrong. I Had To Give In Completely And Just Try To Make The Movie Alejandro Amenábar Was Trying To Make.

I Started Acting When I Was 13 Years Old And I Feel Like I Really Admire Actors Who Are These Kind Of Amazing Shape-changing People, That They Almost Can Turn Themselves Into Other People.

It Is Quite Rare To Find People Who Are Really Dedicated To A Level Of Excellence. Most Of Us Are Really Quite Lazy Most Of The Time.

My Relationship To Reality Has Been So Utterly Skewed For So Long That I Don't Even Notice It Any More. It's Just My Reality.

The Drones Are Really Interesting - How Have The Troops Withdrawn From Afghanistan? Because We've Upped The Drone Strikes And Most Of The Country Doesn't Even Really Know What That Means Or Who We're Killing Or... It's Such A New Weapon That We Don't Know What The Long Term Impacts Of That Kind Of Military Action Is Going To Be.

Few Years Ago I Did A Movie, Good Kill, About Drone Pilots And For Four Or Five Months I'm Obsessed With The Air Force.

I Was Being Taken Around By A Press Agent At The Venice Film Festival At Age 18. Was It Fun? Sure. But It Was A Dangerous Path To Be Walking On As Far As Having A Substantive Life. Because The Casualty Rate At The Venice Film Festival For 18-year-olds? High.

Often You See A Famous Actor Who Says They Produced Something, When All They Did Was Claim To Have An Idea At A Dinner Party And Make Three Phone Calls.

I've Always Been Interested In Directing. I Started Acting When I Was Thirteen Years Old, So I've Had Some Desire To Do Something Else In My Life.

The Only Thing I Can Point To Of Why I Survived Is I Have A Family That Loves Me And Never Wanted Any Money From Me.

One Of The Things That Separates A Good Genre Movie From A Bad Genre Movie, I Always Think, Ironically, Is When You Care About The People. The Dime A Dozen Ones Are Where You Don't Have Any Awareness Of The Character.

I Meet A Lot Of Young People That Want To Go Into Acting Because They Think Of What It Will Do For Them. If That's The Case, It Can Be A Very, Very Painful Profession. But If The Kids Want To Do Acting Because They Love It, And They Want To Give To It, Then They Can Have A Great Life. It's Really About As Simple As How You Look At It.

One Of The Hardest Things About My Job Is That There Kind Of Is No One Rulebook That Applies To All Situations.

A Lot Of American Actors When They Do Shakespeare Put On A Phoney English Accent And It Drives Me Crazy. You're Always Fighting Against The Idea That Only The British Know How To Do Shakespeare.

I Got To Work With Robert Deniro Once And It Was A Strange Experience. Gwyneth Paltrow And I Were Doing Great Expectations Movie Together And We Were Complaining About What A Mediocre Film Experience It Was. Deniro Showed Up On Set And All Of A Sudden The Director Got Better, The Director Of Photography Got Better - Everybody Got More Interested And Excited. Deniro Isn't Waiting For Other People To Create The Environment That He Wants, He Brings It Along With Him.

Sometimes In The Life Of An Actor You're Not Getting Offered Any Jobs That Speak To You. The Trouble With Acting Is That You're Only As Good As Your Opportunities.

In New York, You've Got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, A Crack Addict And A Regular Joe, And They're All On The Same Subway Car.

Alejandro Amenábar Is A Very Interesting Filmmaker. I Had Really Liked The Others, Which Was A Movie He Made With Nicole Kidman A Few Years Ago. He Made A Very Compelling Case About How Much He Wanted Me To Be In This Movie. Whenever A Really Passionate, Talented Filmmaker Seems To Have An Interest In Me, I Take It Very Seriously Because I Like To Work.

It Was Never In My Dreams To Make My Personal Life Anybody Else's Business.

It's Always A Unique Challenge When You're Working With Somebody Where English Is Their Second Language.

Sometimes People Save The Best Part Of Themselves For Their Art.

I Did This Movie Right After It About The Life Of Chet Baker. It's Called Born To Be Blue. In That Situation, There's A Real Clear Character You're Drawing On. It's A Real Person. It's Really Exciting And Interesting To Do The Research To Figure Out How To Make That A Nuanced, Three-dimensional Human Being.

I Like [that] There's A Certain Inherent Drama To Those Jobs That Is Exciting To Tell Stories About And It's Still Real Life. I'm A Little Less Interested In The Current Fad Of Being Obsessed With Superheroes And Things That Are So Out Of The Box.

You Don't Need Other People To Affirm That You're A Valuable Person.

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There's Only So Often You're Going To Have An Opportunity To Contribute At A High Level And That You Should Be Grateful Whenever One Presents Itself And Not Take It Lightly.

For Me, The Real Goal Is To Integrate. The Thing That I'm Most Happy With Is The Fact That I've Been Able To Keep Doing All Of It - To Keep Writing, And To Keep Acting In Movies, And To Keep Acting On The Stage, To Keep Directing Plays. I Find That They Feed Each Other, And That I Learn About Acting From Directing And I Learn About Writing From Acting.

The Experience On That Movie (dead Poets Society) Was, For Lack Of A Better Term, Life-altering. Peter Weir Has A Unique Talent For Making Movies That Are Intelligent But Also Mainstream. I've Never Been Terribly Successful At Doing That.

Depression Is A Real Demon In The Woods For A Lot Of Creative People, You Know? It's Part Of What The Documentary Is Trying To Be About For Me, Finding Balance, Where The Beauty That Is Attainable In The Creative Arts Can Be Matched With The Scratchy Roughness Of Regular Life.

I'm Always Trying To Look For How I Can Find Human Stories That Aren't Just Dramas.

Time Is What Creates Trust.

I Think It's My Job To Risk Looking Foolish. One Of The Things I've Learned From The Actors I've Worked With Is You Don't Get Something For Nothing. If You Don't Risk Looking Foolish, You'll Never Do Anything Special.

I'm A Huge Luc Besson Fan. The Fifth Element, I Just Loved That Movie. Luc Cast Me To Play A Small Part In It, And So I Did, Because I Love All His Movies Actually - The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional. His Movies Are So Wonderful. It's Just Fun To Be In It And For It To Be A Sci-fi Movie.

There's This Kind Of Incredibly Mistaken Idea That Because It's So Much Cheaper To Roll The Camera Than It Used To Be And It's So Much Easier To Accumulate A Ton Of Footage, That Then You Can Just Go Shoot A Ton Of Footage And The Editor Will Make Sense Out Of It. But If You Don't Have Something Deliberate Made, You're Not Gonna Save It In The Editing Room.

A Good Movie Humanizes People.

In Fact, I Think My Life Is Always Going To Be Difficult, Because I Am Trying To Do Something... "original" Is A Big Word. It's Kind Of Pathetic, But I Have To Love What I'm Doing.

I Never Thought That I Would Be Labeled Something Like Generation X Because Of That Movie ( Reality Bites ). I Had No Idea Going Into It, And It Wasn't A Label I Could Relate To.

In Your Mid-twenties, The Paint Is Still Wet On Who You Are.

I Believe In The Healing Restorative Power Of Art And Communication. And So That's Probably My Rule. But That Doesn't Apply To Bedtimes. And Stuff Like That.

We All Have This Fantasy Of Finding Our One True Love Who's Going To Be The Perfect Fit. It's Just Not A Reality.

It's Interesting To Get Older And Realize That Part Of Your Job Growing Up In This Profession Is To Help The Next Generation. More And More, With Boyhood And With Ellar Coltrane And With Emma [watson], I Start To See That Role. There's No Better Way. Nobody Wants Advice, So You Can't Really Give It. You Just Have To Try To Wish Them Well On Their Journey.

I Remember Being A Kid And Sleeping Over At My Friend's House And Staying Up Late And Watching 'nosferatu.' Vampire Movies Are Supposed To Be Secret And Bad. They Should Be Rated R.

I've Very Rarely Worked With Somebody That Had Such A Clear Idea Of What Alejandro Amenábar Wanted To Do And What He Wanted To Achieve. The Guy Is Incredibly Prepared. He Was Clearly Making A Movie For Himself And His Own Dream. I Just Tried To Be A Part Of That Dream. It's A Rare Opportunity.

The Woodstock Film Festival Is Among The Finest Of A Dying Breed: A Festival That Isn’t Trying To Sell You Anything, But Simply And Beautifully Celebrating The Art & Craft Of Filmmaking.

As A Young Man... You Don't Know Anything About Yourself. And Add On To That, You're On The Cover Of Magazines. People Are Interviewing You About What You Think. You Feel Like A Real Phony.

I Kill Flies, I Eat Meat, You Know, Whatever.

The Constant Buzz And Pressure And Noise And Static Of The Internet, And The Way It Makes Young People Feel Makes It Difficult To Grow Up And Develop The Way One Might Want To.

It's A Really Unique Job That Is A Little Schizophrenic And You Have To Kind Of Do It With A Sense Of Humor.the Trick Is Figuring Out What Each Job Is Asking Of You And What It's Not Asking Of You.

People Are Conditioned To Just You Know, Like, You Know We're Like Little Birdies Going To The Bird Feeder You Know, Or The Little Cows Going To The Salt Lick. We Just Like What We've Seen Before.

The Older I Get, The More Obvious It Is That You're Not Really In Control Of Your Life, You're A Part Of A Larger Wave, No Matter Who You Are.

Control Of Your Life

If You Say To Yourself, Okay, I Will Not Self-destruct. I Don't Have To Be The Most Talented Person. I Don't Have To Be Everybody's Best Friend, I Don't Have To Be Liked, I Don't Have To Be Successful, Well, One Thing I Will Not Do Is Self-destruct. If You Take That Out, Your Chances For Success Just Went Up Like 800 Percent.

Right Now The Only People I Can Really Fall In Love With Are People Who Don't Really, Truly Want Me Around. Now Why Do I Do That?

Falling In Love

The Thing That Really Breeds Career Longevity In This Profession Is Doing Good Work. You Can Make $20 Million A Movie, But Does That Mean You'll Still Have A Job When You're 60? It's A Profession That Eats People Up And Wants Constant Turnaround, So You Have To Dedicate Yourself To Learning And Making The Most Of Whatever Gift You May Have.

I Have Had So Many Bad Auditions.

The Girls Who Like Me Aren't The Ones I Like. Or, If I Do And They Want To Commit, I Suddenly Need Tons Of Time With My Friends.

I Love Really Exploring... You Know, A Cop Drama For Example Is A Great Way To Explore Class In This Country And Explore, You Know, Really, Identity In The Country And Who We Are In A Way That Is Extremely Exciting, But It's Also Real, You Know, It's Also Real People And Real Drama. The Same With The Military. I Mean, A Good Science Fiction Story Is Also Great.

One Of The Things That's Really Lousy About Making Movies Is That You Have Such Little Interaction With Your Audience.

Good Genre Movies Are A Little Bit Like Trying To Write A Haiku. There Are Certain Things That You Have To Do To Fulfill The Audience's Expectations, But Inside That, You Have Complete Freedom To Talk About Whatever You Want. Who Wants To See A Movie About Gun Violence In America And Class? But, If You Set It In This Terrifying, Fun, Roller Coaster Ride Of A Movie, You Can Talk About Whatever You Want. That's Been The Game That Genre Movies Play, When They Do It Well.

To Get To Be Somebody Who Gets To Love What They Do For A Living, That's So Rare, And So There Must Be Some Kind Of Price You Have To Pay.

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Directing Is Like Putting Together A Collage.

How To Make A Scary Movie Human, Take A Movie Like Sinister. How Can I Make That Guy So Real So That The Scary Elements Of It Are More Scary And It Functions As A Genre Movie - As The Way It's Supposed To, You Want To Hear A Ghost Story At Midnight, That's A Good One - But How Do You Fill It Up With Humanity Inside, In Staying True To The Genre? You Know? Does That Make Sense?

You Can't Keep Wanting To Be 20 Years Old. Everybody Knows That, But What's In The Next Room?

It Just Makes Sense To Remember Gratitude And The Place That Gratitude Should Have In Your Life, And That None Of Us Are Owed These Wonderful Experiences, And We Should Always Make The Best Of Them.

Alejandro Amenábar Has A Unique Way Of Approaching Movies And Thinking About Something Which Was New To Me. It Was Different. I Have A Lot Of Respect For Him So I Just Took A Gamble.

Oh, I Like Going Down The Rabbit Hole. You Know, That's Kind Of My Job. When You Play Macbeth, You Gotta Dive Down That One. The Trick Is Figuring Out How To Do It With Love And A Sense Of Humor So You Can Pop Back Out Again. But, Kind Of The Actor's Job Is To Go Down The Rabbit Hole.

When You Do 'before Sunset,' You Know While It's A Limited Audience, There Was A Very Small Group Of People That Love 'before Sunrise.' You Feel A Certain Pressure To Make Sure That You Uphold A Level Of Quality That Has Been A Bar. You Set A Bar And You Have To At Least Match It.

It's So Hard For Every Young Person, Trying To Figure Out The Adult You Want To Be.

Everything Is So Finite But That’s What Makes Our Time And Specific Moments So Important.

My Job - And It's Really True - Is That It's Constantly Evolving And Changing. When I Was Doing The Chet Baker Movie I Was Obsessed With Playing The Trumpet, And To My Absolute Shock I Haven't Picked The Trumpet Up Since We Wrapped. It Was So Much Work. I Thought I Was Going To Keep Playing The Rest Of My Life, 'cause It Was Fun, It's Just A Lot Of Work. And It's A Really Unique Job That Exposes You To A Lot.

Alejandro Amenabar Is A Different Kind Of Director Than I Lot Of The Directors I've Asked For. He Really Asks You To Enter His Dream As Opposed To, You Know, A Guy Like Sidney Lumet Or Something Is Going To Ask You To Create A Character Almost Like A Documentary. He Wants You To Make The People Really Real And He's Going To Capture It Like A Documentarian.

The Kindest Compliments I Have Ever Heard Are When Cops Tell Me Training Day And Assault On Precinct 13 Inspired Them To Become Cops. The Funniest Compliments I Have Ever Heard Are When People Tell Me That 'i Love Your Band Sugar Ray.

Whenever Actors Tout Off About Doing Their Own Stunts, It's Always ... They're So Protective Of You That I Always Know These Stunt Guys Are So Good [and] They're Never Going To Put You In Danger. But It's Fun To Do Something Kind Of Exciting, Even Something As Simple As Driving 70 Through A Tunnel With Five Motorcycles ... It Sounds Simple, But It's Actually Really Nerve-wracking.

Set Designers, Costume Designers, Actors, Writers, Music, That's What Is Beautiful.

We're Fascinated By Things That Scare Us, And One Of The Things That Scares Us Is Violence. Violence Exists. It's A Real Part Of Our Lives. We Are Obsessed With What We're Scared Of, But It Certainly Doesn't Define Us.

Don't You Find It Odd," She Continued, "that When You're A Kid, Everyone, All The World, Encourages You To Follow Your Dreams. But When You're Older, Somehow They Act Offended If You Even Try.

My Process Differs... My Process For A Richard Linklater Film Is Very Different Than A Process For Training Day.

The Biggest Problem In My Life Is Trying To Be The Kind Of Man That I Want To Be, The Father That I Want To Be, And How To Process The Failure Of My Marriage.

I'd Really Rather That Nobody Had A Gun, And Then Nobody Would Have To Worry About It. That Would Be More My Theory. In America, There's This Knee-jerk Response That More Walls And More Guns Make People Safer, And I'm Entirely Suspect Of That Way Of Thinking.

It Was Fantastic To Be On The Set Again With Denzel (washington) And Antoine (fuqua) And Then To Have The Situation Be So Different. We Weren't Making A Sequel To Training Day. We Were In The Middle Of The Desert Riding Around On Some Horses.

I Did This Movie, Predestination, And It's One Of My Favorite Movies I've Ever Made, Because Sci-fi Really Lets You Talk About Ideas In A Way That's Not Pretentious.

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