I've worked with some very good directors and some very bad ones. I learned a great deal from both. From the bad, untalented people, you learn what not to do. And when you work with very highly talented people, you want to emulate them.
— Tommy Lee Jones
I try to be as good a director as I possibly can. I try to be prepared, and I hope everyone else is. The preparation, I suppose, means just about everything. Little things mean a lot.
It's important for me as an actor to know the entire script before you start shooting, and especially if you're directing, you don't want to be struggling with anything.
You should never ask a horse or an actor to do something they cannot do. Wisdom will teach you to find out what they can do and then make it easy for them.
I don't need much of a character in my life. I've already got one; my family knows who I am, and I don't have a reason to make an impression on the world around me unless it's in a professional context. Acting is not a personal experience; it's a job.
I still think probably the only thing I'm suited for is being a boy from Texas.
My grandmother grew up in a 19th-century world, and my daughter has grown up in a 21st-century world, and some issues, problems, dilemmas that these women face have not changed.
I don't have a favorite genre. I think 'genre' is a literary term. I don't have a favorite kind or type of movie. I like the ones that are good.
I think any thinking person should be worried about climate change.
I've worked with more than 50 directors ,and I've paid attention since day one. That's pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I've seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving. You just leave the bad part out.
As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene... or shoot the shot 'til they make me quit.
The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.
I've never really known what glamour is.
I'm a believer in belief. Faith is something that works - it causes people to do things, it has results. It's an intangible, indefinable, very real thing. And it moves people, sometimes to atrocity. And sometimes to survival.
The world's not a very comfortable place if you have a nightmare to face.
I enjoy acting more and more than when I was 17.
The most important question in American cinema, I've learned, is 'When is lunch?'
My education as a filmmaker has been entirely practical. I started working professionally in the film business in 1970, and I've been at it steadily since, and I pay a lot of attention.
I like to make movies on the west side of the Mississippi River, and a lot of times, the movies I direct have horses and big hats in them and get called westerns, but that's okay. I used to resent that, but I don't anymore.
The entire elementary school in Rotan, Texas, presented a theatrical production of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' And the part of Sneezy fell to me.
Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.
I play characters, and I try to play them in a manner that's appropriate to the script. Physical movement and vitality of language is part of character.
I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world.
As it turns out, my grandmother, my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all women, and I like those people. I'm concerned about the issues that they face in their lives. So I'm a feminist, but that's not all I am.
In the course of American history, great steps are taken by ordinary people, and ordinary people are not perfect.
I'm kind of pleased with myself that I've got a tailor on Savile Row. I'm 68 years old. I deserve it.
I do not have a sense of humor of any recognizable sort.
If you want to know about my politics, the only way to do that is to look at my work.
All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.
Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.
I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.
Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.
I think that no matter how much you don't like yourself or the drama of your life you can still find some comedy in it.
I've made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!
I've worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.
There's an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River.
I'm an introspective guy when there's money in it.
How do you play someone in a movie? How do you do that? It's impossible - unless you know how. How do you cut somebody open and take out their appendix and sew them back up and watch them get well? That's impossible - unless you know how.
Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met, on the first day of college, 35 years ago.
You are going to grow up whether you want to or not. It requires no effort.
If you look at how people use the term 'western,' you can only conclude that it means a movie that has big hats and horses. And if you really want to sound like you've been thinking, then you'll use a term like 'genre.' But all the hell it seems to mean is big hats and horses. Which is not all that deeply analytical.
I probably watch less than one hour of television a week. And when I do watch television, it's usually a football game. Sometimes I'll watch a news broadcast for a few minutes. Otherwise, I don't have time.
The quality of one's emotional life changes over the years, doesn't it? But the basic instincts and desires, greed and hope, seem to remain constant. In the larger scope of things, there's a sense of fulfillment to living a creative life. So I guess that's what keeps me going.
It's no mean calling to bring fun into the afternoons of large numbers of people. That, too, is part of my job, and I'm happy to serve when called on.
In the political world, the only position I have is voter. I'm not a spokesman for anything.
I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.
You know, I don't really think you have to play nice guys.
If you don't hurt anybody or try to steal anything, you'll be fine in the South.
Partnerships are good engines for narrative.
Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.
