I have always said that innocence is much more powerful than experience.
— Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Everyone's terrified of being mediocre. Everyone wants to be special.
When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.
All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another.
To become a celebrity, a name - and I've actually met some that speak of themselves in the third person - it's scary. They become an object, not a human, complex, questioning thing where the cells are always changing.
I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing.
Everybody is looking for validation, no matter who you are, and I think that's a need of the human condition - to look for affection or recognition or validation.
Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.
I think that when we wrestle with death... we start fearing life, because then we come to terms with something that is inevitable.
We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.
Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from you.
'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.
I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.
From the time we open our eyes, we live in a Steadicam form, and the only editing is when we talk about our lives or remember things.
I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn't be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems.
When you are shooting in a conventional way, you put nets around yourself. It's very hard to fall and hit the ground. You can always manipulate things to make it not embarrassing. If the scene is a little bit bad, you can polish it or even take it out. You can hide your mistakes.
I'm an intense person. My own vision of life has always been heavy.
I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.
I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.
To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.
I realized - and I am probably the last person in the world to realize this - that we live our lives with no editing.
My cinema is an extension of myself. A sort of life-testimony of my vital experience, with my few virtues and my numerous limitations.
