If I had to do a lot of promotion as a kid, it would have been very intense. I'm really glad I got to go through high school, have a college experience, and have the last five years since then, just... being a person.
— Alden Ehrenreich
My favorite one... it's hard to pick a favorite. But the one I really love a lot is 'A Serious Man.' I just love, love 'A Serious Man.'
I think now I'm more realistic, but I'm still very much an idealist.
If I tried to somehow wrap my head around the fact that Francis Ford Coppola directed my first movie, there's never a slot into which that ever fits in your mind.
I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off. I buy myself a present whenever I don't get a role that I really wanted. You get bummed out, and then you go, 'Oh! Now I get to go buy a present for myself.' That kind of helps.
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 haven't worked enough to worry about getting typecast, but I do as a film lover didn't want to be working with the bad guys. I didn't want to be making a movie I thought was contributing to a lower base of movies that I just didn't think were helping people, really.
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.
My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.
I think it would be frustrating having to do things you wouldn't want to do, having to make movies you didn't like.
I had a meeting with the producer of 'Five Easy Pieces,' which is my favorite movie. He introduced me to Francis, and I spent six months going to Napa and Buenos Aires, auditioning for Francis and doing these incredible improvisational games. It was a very bohemian audition process.
It's not hard for me to access a bad actor. That's always there. It's actually kind of a load off your mind because, the worse you do, the better it goes.
I remember pretending to be the characters in the movies when I was a little kid.
I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff.
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.
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've had a couple opportunities where I've been on the other side of the audition process as a director, so it's 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.
I feel about romance the same way I do about a vocation: it's a calling. You have an inner intuition, an inner 'yes.' I don't know if it's destined or not, but certainly I couldn't imagine being the person I am today without the romantic experiences I've had.
I've been in movies where so much of the conversation was about, 'Well, after this movie, you're gonna be the biggest movie star.' I sort of have learned that you never really can predict any of that.
It's funny: the reason I did 'Beautiful Creatures' was the same reason I did everything else - even though it was a genre film and existed at a more studio level, the script and the characters were so well written.
Even though I grew up in L.A., no one in my family was in the movie industry. 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.
I would say that it's mainly about the director. It's a hard quality to find, but I always know whether I want to do something or not. The character is important to me, as is getting to work with people that I feel like I can learn from and make a great movie with.
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.
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.
