Owen Wilson Quotes

In Rome, I loved seeing the Caravaggios. There are churches in Rome that have Caravaggios, and there's one, not far from Piazza Navona, that has the best, I think: St. Matthew with the money.

I think of myself as a doom person. I'm a worrier. But I like the idea of being an optimist. Maybe I'm the kind of optimist who deep down knows it's not going to work.

I love Francis Bacon. I just saw a great Jackson Pollock exhibit at the Dallas Museum when I was home for Thanksgiving.

I remember hearing a good story about Jack Nicholson working with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining [1980]. Nicholson was saying that, as an actor, you always want to try to make things real. And believable. When he was working with Kubrick, he finished a take and said, "I feel like that was real." And Kubrick said, "Yes, it's real, but it's not interesting".

Anna Wintour has a reputation - she can be very intimidating - but that day [Valentino show] she was just smiling and laughing. That was my first time meeting her, and she seemed like she was having a great time. Everybody was enjoying themselves.

I became sort of an aficionado on the Valentino pajamas, because I like those so much.

I always think about Katharine Graham - she was the publisher of The Washington Post. In her autobiography she talks about the way her parents met. Her father was, I think, in New York just walking by on his way home and looked into a store and saw the lady that became his wife. It was just pure luck. And she said that it once again reminds her of the role that luck and chance play in our life. I really believe that, too.

It isn't so much that I choose the roles - I mean, I guess there's a little bit of a selection process - but it's more just what people offer you.

We worked together with Wes Anderson writing a couple more movies together: Rushmore [1998] and Tenenbaums.

You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can't. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights. I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.

I guess that's the thing about Rome: It never changes.

The first thing I remember is Alexander Calder - our school took us on a field trip to go see the Calder mobiles, and that always stuck in my memory.

We didn't know what the reception was going to be when we walked out on the runway, but it felt like we were in a rock band. People started cheering. It was a nice way to begin Zoolander 2, with that kind of reception.

You know you're in love when you wear condoms while having sex with other women.

I have never taken myself that seriously as an actor.

I lived in Rome for about five or six months during Life Aquatic.

Movies I liked growing up were like Francis Ford Coppolla movies and Scorsese movies.

Maybe that's why there's an insecurity sometimes in acting, because it's not like there's a correlation between hard work and how people receive you.

You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.

Being in a bathtub with Jackie Chan, I don't know, it has a way of bonding you I'll tell you that. I don't know if there are some weird undertones. It was like we had met in Los Angeles and we didn't have that much to say to each other but, after that bathtub scene, we were great friends.

My mother photographed Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas, right before he passed away. He was actually the first artist whose work I collected. I just loved the photographs that my mom had done of Donald Judd and the installations in Marfa.

And James L. Brooks then sort of became our mentor, brought us out to Los Angeles and worked on the script for a year with us. We learned so much working with him - just being able to spend time with him, the quality of his mind, the things he comes up with and says. I think Wes [Anderson] and I could go to dinner tonight and spend the whole dinner thinking and talking about things that Jim has said to us over the years.

I like the Valentino store in Rome.Because in Rome when I'd be riding my bike, that store is right next to the Spanish Steps, and it gets so crowded there, so I could sometimes duck into the Valentino store and go up to the top floor and have a little espresso and just relax and take it easy.

It was nice that you guys have such a good sense of humor, because some people don't have the ability to laugh at something.

I think the way it works is that when you're casting a movie, you usually want to work with people that you believe in.

The movies I've done with Wes [Anderson] have a much different quality than some of the more broad comedies. But what is interesting is how many sequels I've done. I've worked with Ben [Stiller] a million times now, and this is yet another sequel we're doing. I guess we're lucky to be in some movies that people wanted to see again.

I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time.

James L.Brooks is just a very original person. So that was definitely the luckiest, most important thing that happened to me [meeting him]. Then I guess also meeting Ben Stiller. He cast me in the only thing I think I ever auditioned for and got: Cable Guy [1996]. And that led to us becoming friends.

If someone doesn't want me, I'm not going to hang around and win them over.

I haven't seen a lot of screwball comedies, and I don't think of myself as loving the genre. To me it sounds like, okay, you're going to be in a lot of crazy situations that are unbelievable.

I think of Terrence Malick's movie Days of Heaven - one of Richard Gere's first movies - you can push pause on almost any image in the movie and it looks like a painting.

If a movie goes south, it might not capsize me the way it used to. But I still have a terrible fear of failure. I'm a huge worrier.

I think for Wes [Anderson] and me, the most important thing was James L. Brooks producing our first movie and giving us a chance to come to Hollywood, because without him, we might never have gotten the chance.

Through my friend Tony Shafrazi, who's an art dealer and an artist himself - he helped to show Basquiat and Keith Haring, and has worked with the Francis Bacon estate - it was really through my friendship with Tony that I developed even more of an interest in art.

Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie.

I remember working with Jackie Chan on Shanghai Noon [2000], and when we were working on the script, I thought that my character thought about being an outlaw the way a kid today would think about being a rock star, as a way to impress girls. So it was just kind of a funny idea, but once we had that idea, it changed the character and made it something that was funnier to me to play.

You can't get too attached to any one shampoo. And conditioner, also.

I saw Ben Stiller's movie Walter Mitty [2013]; it's very beautiful. You look at some of the movies John Ford did with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and then look at Remington and Ansel Adams, and I think you see a connection, certainly in the imagery of the West.

Acting is more fun than writing. Writing is harder, more like having a term paper.

After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky.

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.

I try to find a way to make it comfortable or interesting or funny to me.

Hansel is certainly about comfort, while still sort of having a peacock principle of wanting to attract attention.

What's funny is that there's a lot of great Australian actors in American movies but you don't often hear them do their Australian, original accent.

That's the thing about friendship, it's a lot rarer than love, because there is nothing in it for any body.

Australian cattle dogs, are not like Labradors, where they just like to just sit around by the fire and get petted. They're working dogs, so they have a lot of energy, and they can drive you crazy.

There's what is on screen and then for us, it's if you get along with the people and enjoy showing up at work.

I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.