Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.

I think Magnolia is one of the best films I've ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I'll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I've ever been in and ever seen.

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.

I know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft.

If I was a little bit younger I would worry more. I'd want to do one thing at a time but now I try to do a bunch of different things at a time if I can.

I feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through.

You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.

I've never been on a cruise.

I know that obviously, that if you want to get the story, if you want to get close to somebody, if you want to find out what is really the truth or what's really interesting, you have to create a trust between these two things, between the journalist and the subject.

My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.

I try not to plan that too much.

I don't get nervous when I'm directing a play. It's not like acting.

Creating anything is hard.

When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.

The foibles of my body are pretty much out there in the work I do.

I try to live my life in such a way that I don't have any regrets. That's probably why I work so much. I don't want to feel I missed something important.

I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'

My love for the theater has always been a priority. That hasn't changed. I got into acting that way. The film work that came up was really a surprise.

To be loved, I think, is the thing that gets you up in the morning.

When you're acting, you're subjective; when you're a director, you're more objective.You're kind of watching from the outside and helping others, and therefore I learn my mistakes through others, and also my assets through others.

I would never not work on the part without it playing. That's what being an actor is. You use everything that's influenced you to help you get out of yourself or be more creative.

When you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It's a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.

You can look at anything as a cult. Churches are cults in their own way.

Sometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

I was a breed of people who aren't capable of doing anything, really. At college I began to get the idea that being macho wasn't the accepted norm in the liberal world, and especially the world I entered into, which was the artistic world. I had a lot of problems with that because I was struggling with the need to be proud of being a man, which wasn't something I was feeling.

I always knew where I needed to go but I sometimes had a problem getting there, so I had to work harder at it. Once in a while I'd wanna take off the blouse and heels because I'd get that "I just wanna be a guy" feeling I had when growing up.

I think I'm less anonymous than I was.

A lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.

My mum's name is Marilyn O'Connor. She's here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.

Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.

I didn't really buy LPs or go to concerts.

Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft.

Acting is so difficult for me that, unless the work is of a certain stature in my mind, unless I reach the expectations I have of myself, I'm unhappy. Then it's a miserable existence. I'm putting a piece of myself out there. If it doesn't do anything, I feel so ashamed. I'm afraid I'll be the kind of actor who thought he would make a difference and didn't. Right now, though, I feel like I made a little bit of difference.

Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.

Women are the life force we look at for their beauty.

I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

Bob Glaudini, the writer, he's a wonderfully talented man and all his plays and his screenplays, they all have sense of something bigger, even though you're looking at something very simple.

There's nothing risky in talking about your personal life. People do it all the time.

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

Actors are responsible to the people we play.

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.

My mum is incredibly intelligent.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.