Chris Messina Quotes

Woody Allen, when we did Vicky Cristina Barcelona, said to Rebecca Hall, "Do it one time happy, one time sad, and one time indifferent, as I won't know where you should be until I'm editing this, in terms of your emotions."

I love 'Boardwalk Empire.' I really love that world. I love that style. I love all the actors on it.

As corny as it sounds, I'm often pinching myself going, 'What great opportunities and great parts and great people that I've gotten to work with.

Yeah, I think everybody has the crises of questioning themselves at some point or other in their lives. Is this where I should live? The job I should have? The girl I should be dating? Is this the friend I should have?

Look at what your idea of success would be. The more that you take in external motivators, the more it reduces your ultimate satisfaction because it doesn't come from inside.

What's monotonous about being an actor and often makes me want to throw in the towel or drive a car off a bridge is the auditioning - the waiting around.

It's always flattering when somebody you really respect and like wants you to be involved in their project - let alone writes a part with your voice in mind.

When you do a play, you do it for a couple months, and it just gets in your bones. You can learn about somebody that way.

I'm from another time period. E-mailing sometimes, for me, is difficult.

I like funny things, but I don't find myself particularly funny.

I think Aaron Sorkin is like Shakespeare. When you go through it, there is a rhythm and clues all over the place of how it should be played.

There's been a lot of times that I thought I'd never work again; I was really bummed out.

I'm from Long Island. Strong Island.

If you cry too much on screen, you're crying for the audience.

I mean, in the editing room, you sit there, and you're so happy about a lot of it. You've got these great actors, and the DP's great, and you love it... And then there's so much you're mad about. Cause you've made so many mistakes. So yeah, there're scenarios where you're like, "Ah, I wish I could change this. How do I make this better?" "No matter what I do, the scene's not working, what do I do?"

Well, it's always strange to kiss someone with 10, 20, 40 people around.

You live through the play at 8 o'clock, straight through, and nobody can call "Cut!" But also with the stage you're getting instant reactions. You hear people snoring in the audience, and bored to tears, or sometimes you hear the laughter, and you can hear them listening.

I'm not a cook. I don't think I ever will be.

If you're playing your character and you're running into all these people who know who you are and treat you in a way that doesn't pertain at all to the character, it takes you out of it more, so when you're alone in a city where people don't know you, you can kind of pretend even more and get into the head space of where you need to be.

Nothing is as it seems; everything is as you allow it to be

My wife Jennifer Todd, who's a producer. She runs Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's company, and she produced Memento, and Boiler Room, and Prime, and Across the Universe... and Alice in Wonderland... She's really smart, and very helpful. That was nice, because I was super neurotic and worried.

I would love to close my eyes and see myself with my girlfriend when we're 99 years old and I have a pipe and she's knitting a sweater, and I hope that's the way it goes. I think it's a challenge every day.

I'm lucky to just be a working actor. There are so many great actors out there and I'm just lucky to have gotten work.

Invented the #hashtag.

I was shooting on The Mindy Project while I was editing Alex of Venice, which was the stupidest thing I could've done. It was like having two full-time jobs. But in editing some characters were dropped, some storylines were dropped. It just starts dictating what it's supposed to be.It's scary, but fun to try to be brave and to "kill your darlings." To get rid of the stuff that you were like, "Oh, I'll never get rid of that. I love that. As long of a take as it is, I'm gonna keep that in."

I've spent so much of my youth trying to change people or change girls and then having it done to me and people wanting me to change.

I think as an actor, you're constantly putting yourself out there, and a lot of times failing - and failing in front of a bunch of people - and sometimes you have a good moment and something clicks.

I am a big fan of movies from the ’70s.

Ultimately, making movies, if you don't have a big star, it's hard to do. Or if it's not a star director.

The rain probably dampened the spirits of those that decided not to come. But the people who were here didn't know it was raining because they were having so much fun.