Money speaks in Utah.
— Robert Redford
I guess I don't like the fact that my life is becoming less and less my own - the prevailing attitude that you have an obligation to deliver yourself to the public. Actually, you're delivered to the public whether you like it or not. I guess if you don't like it, you should stop doing what provokes it. In my case, that's acting.
Going to Santa Fe is like going to Greece. It's not that special compared to other areas. The pinon pines are no different than pinon pines elsewhere. But there has been culture there longer than in most places, and you feel it.
For 'Jeremiah Johnson,' nobody wanted to make that film. I went to Sydney Pollack, and I said, 'Sydney, I live in the mountains, and I would like to make a film about a person that had to exist in the mountains and survive in the mountains.'
I just wanted to paint and sketch and tell stories by drawing.
The Right has such antiquated ideas - if they took charge, I think they'd want to close the parks, open the land up for development. It's an ongoing battle to keep the parks strong.
I had a mild case of polio - not enough to put me in an iron lung, but enough to keep me bedridden for weeks. As I came out of it, my mom wanted to do something for me. She realized that, growing up in the city, I'd missed out on a lot of nature.
I have no regrets, because I've done everything I could to the best of my ability.
I believe the American people care a lot about the environment.
'Butch Cassidy' was the only film I ever enjoyed making.
The focus of entertainment is taking away from what the public needs as news. I think investigative journalism will always be important and always find its way, be it on the Internet or wherever.
I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists.
I've always felt that almost every part I've played has been a character part. I mean, I look at it that way. I can't help how I look or how I seem to people.
I'm not much interested in sport just as sport. I wouldn't be interested in making a golf film or baseball or fishing film.
I have a lot of land. I bought it because I had a very strong feeling. I was in my early twenties, and I had grown up in Los Angeles and had seen that city slide off into the sea from the city I knew as a little kid. It lost its identity - suddenly there was cement everywhere and the green was gone and the air was bad - and I wanted out.
I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.
I never had a problem with my face on screen. I thought it is what it is, and I was turned off by actors and actresses that tried to keep themselves young.
Park City is developing itself, almost to death.
I really do miss being able to go through life a little less noticed.
When you're making a movie, you don't think about the outcome. That's something I'm grateful for: whenever I go and do a new project, I never think about the outcome. It's always just about the work at hand. That's the fun part. The other part is always something I've had a struggle with, which is promoting the film. I know it's important.
I haven't seen 'The Revenant,' but I'm sure it was great because it has a lot of talent involved.
I wanted to get out of this country and experience different ways of seeing the world. So I went to Europe, but I went as an artist. I was increasing my skill set and exploring storytelling through painting.
I spent two summers working at Camp Curry and at Yosemite Lodge as a waiter. It gave me a chance to really be there every day - to hike up to Vernal Falls or Nevada Falls. It just took me really deep into it. Yosemite claimed me.
I don't think about when it's going to stop and what you do before it stops. You just keep moving.
I'm not a left-wing person. I'm just a person interested in the sustainability of my country.
People are becoming more and more aware of how the dominance of development and business is altering their lives and, in particular, their own heritage.
When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.
I think documentary filmmakers need as much protection as possible under journalist's privilege. How else is the public to know what is going on?
I'm interested in that thing that happens where there's a breaking point for some people and not for others. You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there's no sign that it's going to get any better, and that's the point when people quit. But some don't.
Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.
When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.
The way you really find out about the performer's seriousness about the cause is how long they stay with it when the spotlight gets turned off. You see a lot of celebrities switch gears. They go from the environment to animal rights to obesity or whatever. That I don't have a lot of respect for.
I think that people should be paying a lot more attention to other issues, rather than who's the top 10 this or... who's the sexiest or the most beautiful.
I don't see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me 'hay head.'
Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think, since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.
When I was a kid, all I knew was that I felt more comfortable sitting in one chair than in another. And now I realize it was because one chair was older. I still respond directly to the age of things.
What I would like to do is a thriller. I've been wanting to do that for a long time, but one that was not at all dependent on special effects. Just purely psychological, but will scare the hell out of you. That's what I would like to do. I have not found it yet.
I didn't know the technical language of filmmaking, so I said, 'OK, I'm going to do my own storyboard,' because I had to explain to the crew and the technical people what I wanted.
I'm an impatient person, so it's hard for me to sit around and do take after take after take.
A few years after that first visit, I applied for a job in Yosemite.
I have the freedom to take chances, to say no. I have the freedom to be who I really want to be, rather than have to conform to this or that just to stay alive.
I am passionate. I am political about my country, about what it is, how strong it is, how strong it remains.
I love making films more than anything, but it's tough.
I can't go into a bar anywhere without someone starting to play 'the Entertainer'.
I'm not a lawyer, but I do know this: we need to protect our ability to tell controversial stories.
When people start thinking of you more as a persona, they are less inclined to allow you to move into different areas. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes they're just very stereotypical or restricted in their own thinking of what they'll allow you to do.
Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.
I've always liked speed. I own a car that I shouldn't be talking about because I'm an environmentalist, but the 1955 Porsche Spyder 550 RS is the finest sports car ever made.
When I was a kid, nobody told me I was good-looking. I wish they had. I would've had a better time.
Celebrity is a big part of the American social system. I'm certainly grateful for what it's done for me, but I do think that celebrity is overdone in our society. I think it's got a dangerous side to it.
