Judd Nelson Quotes

[John] Hughes was open to that [rehearsal]. This can only happen if the director and/or the writer are open to that.

Santa Jr. I was a cop. Yes, I was officially Santa. But a younger Santa. He goes young, clean-shaven, to how we imagine Santa with all the white hair and beard and "Ho ho ho." Kind of funny.

I went to acting school in New York City for two years. I studied with Stella Adler

I always thought that the badge a cop has was more like the shield that Captain America has. It's an obvious sign of good and something you'll protect other people with, but it will also protect you.

All of the directors I've worked with I have loved and would work with again. I have no favorites.

[John Hurt] just really gifted, and I had a great time working with him and [am] very lucky to have worked with him.

Sweets, you couldn't ignore me if you tried.

You have to kind of roll with the punches. That's why I think work begets work to a certain degree. I just try and keep busy.

Breakfast Club was great because we had a real rehearsal, and we shot primarily in sequence.

Death is not my best subject.

Breakfast Club was great because we had a real rehearsal, and we shot primarily in sequence. I thought that was going to be how movies were done. I didn't really know how lucky we all were. We had a director that liked actors. I didn't know that was going to be rare.

Paul Gleason he was a great guy. I loved working with him.

I had to audition for Fandango. When I read the script, the role that was interesting - so everyone thought - was the role that Costner played. He was the cool guy. And I read the script, and my representation at the time said, "That's the role you should read for." And I was like, "Really? How about I read for this other role." And they went, "Well, you're not going to get that role."

I took all the philosophy courses I could.

When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play.

You know who was wonderful to work with? Was Paul Gleason, may he rest in peace.

I put less stock in others' opinions than my own. No one else's opinions could derail me.

I have adopted clothes from all the projects I'm in. It's really been a while since I've bought anything myself.

My Brat Pack buddies and I didn't exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure.

I remember Emilio [Estevez] and I were at John's house during the rehearsal process. And John [Huges] had mentioned he wrote the first draft of Breakfast Club in a weekend. And we both at the same time went, "First draft? How many do you have?" And John said he's got four other drafts. And we go, "Can we read them?" And for the next three hours, Emilio and I read those other four drafts.

There were a few things that, in rehearsal, any one of us might try. [John] Hughes would go, "I like that," to me spitting up in the air and catching it in my mouth. It was just something I did in a rehearsal and Molly [ Ringwald] went, "Ewww." And John went, "Can you do that again?" And I went all day long, and he was like, "Okay, let's do that."

I play a garbage man who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. Terrible.

Part of the reason I thought that I might do a series is, my dad has pretty much been on the same road to work for years and years. And it's like, "Could I do something like that? Am I so independent that I can't punch the clock at the same place?" So part of it was a kind of exercise. "Can I be responsible in this way?" And lo and behold, I could. Luckily. It'd be bad if I couldn't.

If you read a script enough, especially a good script - I try to read it 40 to 50 times before you begin so you get a sense of the arc: what happens before, what happens after, what happens during.

The first animation thing I did was the first Transformers, the one that was animated many years ago. And I had heard that Orson Welles was doing a voice on it.

[John] Hughes is a great loss, I think. He was the first filmmaker that could look at someone who was young without seeing them as being less.

I'm involved with Recording Artists and Actors Against Drunk Driving. I'm also involved with most children's causes, because children can't help the environment they're in.

It's a profession where merit is not necessarily rewarded.

You just have to learn certain technical things, like where the camera is, not to block people's light in your own, to hit your marks, and that you do it kind of piecemeal.

I think that sometimes you don't have the opportunities for some of the most A-list-type movies, big-budget movies. But I think it's important to keep working and make the best of what's available. Because otherwise, what? Are you just going to get bitter and moan? What does my mom always say? "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Kim Coates is really funny. He's a blast. If you have to get beaten up and tortured, he's a good guy to get tortured by.

The Dark Backward. Bill Paxton is in it with me. Wayne Newton. James Caan. Adam Rifkin wrote and directed it. It was made a number of years ago and very odd. Not for the squeamish.

You get the sense that [John] Hughes is so right about the way groups divide and then divide again and then sometimes align and then sometimes break apart. And this idea that Michael Hall's character says, "On Monday, are we going to be friends?" you know, based on this.

Stagecoach is really my first Western-Western, the whole horses and gunplay. It was really fun. We shot it fast, too. We got lucky with the weather. If it rained, I don't know if we would have been able to finish it. We had like 12 shooting days for the whole thing.

Alien's a great one. That's a scary movie.

In a good script, it's really like a treasure map. You just focus on that, all the answers are pretty much in it.

There was no one really like John Bender at my high school.

Phil Hicks was the guy that was in the ROTC, that was going to go into the Vietnam War and thought that was the responsibility of the citizen.

It's more like the inner workings of John Bender. He feels like he's been given a short shrift, he's not been provided the opportunities that maybe these other kids have. So he feels like he begins in a hole. And instead of trying to raise himself up, he wants to bring all of them down. That's a dynamic that's pretty universal. And so that was the real foothold on that. It wasn't like, "Oh, my high school experience is like John Bender's [in St. Elmo's Fire]."

I am very grateful to make my living doing what I would do for free.

I went to acting school with Mario Van Peebles. For a little while, he was at the same school. So he asked me if I wanted to do [ New Jack City]. He said, "There's not really a role. We'll figure something out. But would you like to?" And I was like, "Sure." 'Cause he said it was Chris Rock and Ice T's first movie.

I don't have any blindness when it comes to my money. As an actor, you can get distracted by your work. I do keep an eye on my nest egg, if you will.

I think I was, like, 23 or something [on The Breakfast Club]. I was the oldest of the five. Emilio [Estevez] and Ally [Sheedy] were a year younger. The only real difference was that Molly [ Ringwald] and Michael [Hall] still had to go to school. They could shoot, like, a half day. So a lot of my close coverage was done with Molly's stand-in, so Molly could do her schoolwork.

While they would have provided financial support if I had needed it, the greatest support my parents gave was emotional, psychological.

It is a career of make-believe, of masks. We all have masks in life.

I love the rehearsal process in the theatre, and the visceral sense of contact and communication with a live audience.

Fandango is not really a Western. It's really just set in Texas. It's a road picture. And then I did one that hasn't come out yet called Kreep, which is set in Texas, but it's not really a Western. But it has a more rural-Texas feel to it.

Almost anything makes me laugh, especially jokes at my own expense. And I will never, ever admit to being ticklish anywhere.