I am so leading the life that I want and wanted and dreamed of as a kid. I'm trying very hard not to abuse it or take advantage of it.
— Kevin Spacey
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.
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.
I don't care about my personal acting career anymore. I'm done with it. After 10 years of making movies and doing better than I ever could have imagined, I sort of had to ask myself: 'What am I supposed to do with all of this success that I have had?'
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.
I've been on sets where things weren't relaxed because someone was creating tension for no reason.
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.
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 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.
As the years have gone on, I find one of the dangers of watching dailies... is you fall in love with moments.
Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get.
I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political.
It's not easy to sustain a long career, and sometimes I don't even think about how long I've been doing 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.
If you're lucky enough to do well, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down.
If you're watching a film on your television, is it no longer a film because you're not watching it in a theatre? If you watch a TV show on your iPad, is it no longer a TV show? The device and the length are irrelevant; the labels are useless, except perhaps to agents and managers and lawyers, who use these labels to conduct business deals.
For me, coming to work every day has turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be.
Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.
Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.
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.
I'm supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I'm somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you've got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I'm somebody else?
I'm lucky if I find one movie a year that's worth doing, and when I do find one, it usually only takes 20-30 days to shoot.
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.
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.
And I certainly won't lay out areas of my life that I think are just private.
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!
I've been intrigued by politics my whole life. And, yes, I am very close to the Clintons. I was a Hillary person until I was an Obama person. And she was a Hillary person, too, until she was an Obama one, evidently.
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.
People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.
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.
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.
I'm aware that, from the outside, this looks like I've got quite an ego.
Secondarily, I think films that are driven by music also terrify studios.
My life will change, because I want it to change; and also because this is something I'm committed to doing and that I believe my life has been leading towards.
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.
I'm not someone who's led my life trying to get publicity; I'd rather do my work and go home.
I went through a period of great rebellion within my family, when I was about 9 or 10. I was mad, I had no focus, had no real interest in anything, and so I started to do things that were just rebellious and stupid.
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.
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.
Am I now supposed to go on Oprah and cry and tell you my deepest, darkest secrets because you want to know?
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.
